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Rh attention required. In like manner plainly some wild things become cultivated and some cultivated things become wild; for the one kind of change is due to cultivation, the other to neglect:—however it might be said that this is not a change but a natural development towards a better or an inferior form;(for that it is not possible to make a wild olive pear or fig into a cultivated olive pear or fig). As to that indeed which is said to occur in the case of the wild olive, that if the tree is transplanted with its top-growth entirely cut off, it produces 'coarse olives,' this is no very great change. However it can make no difference which way one takes this.

III. Apart from these changes it is said that in such plants there is a spontaneous kind of change, sometimes of the fruit, sometimes of the tree itself as a whole, and soothsayers call such changes portents. For instance, an acid pomegranate, it is said, may produce sweet fruit, and conversely and again, in general, the tree itself sometimes undergoes a change, so that it becomes sweet instead of acid, or the reverse happens. And the change to sweet is considered a worse portent. Again a wild fig may turn into a cultivated one, or the contrary change take place; and the latter is a worse portent. So again a cultivated olive may turn into a wild one, or conversely, but the latter change is rare. So again a white fig 119