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 that holly loses its fruit owing to the winter. Lime and box are very late in fruiting, (lime has a fruit which no animal can eat, and so have cornel and box. Ivy Phoenician cedar fir and andrachne are late fruiting ) though, according to the Arcadians, still later than these and almost latest of all are tetragonia odorous cedar and yew. Such then are the differences as to the time of shedding and ripening their fruit between wild as compared with cultivated trees, and likewise as compared with one another.

V. Now most trees, when they have once begun to bud, make their budding and their growth continuously, but with fir silver-fir and oak there are intervals. They make three fresh starts in growth and produce three separate sets of buds; wherefore also they lose their bark thrice a year. For every tree loses its bark when it is budding. This first happens in mid-spring at the very beginning of the month Thargelion, on Mount Ida within about fifteen days of that time; later, after an interval of about thirty days or rather more, the tree puts on fresh buds which start from the head of the knobby growth which formed at the first budding-time; and it makes its budding partly on the top of this, partly all round it laterally, using the knob formed at the