Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/209

Rh etc.; tells how to make vows for your oxen with an offering to Mars, and Sylvanus in a wood, no woman to be present, or to know how it is done.

If you wish to remove an ill savor from wine, he recommends to heat a brick, pitch it, and let it down by a string to the bottom of the cask, and let it remain there two days, the cask being stopped. &quot;If you wish to know if water has been added to wine, make a little vessel of ivy wood (materia ederacea). Put into it the wine which you think has water in it. If it has water, the wine will run out (effluet); the water will remain, for a vessel of ivy wood does not hold wine.&quot;

&quot;Make a sacrificial feast for the oxen when the pear is in blossom. Afterward begin to plow in the spring.&quot;—&quot;That day is to be holy (feriæ) to the oxen, and herdsmen, and those who make the feast.&quot; They offer wine and mutton to Jupiter Dapalis, also to Vesta if they choose.

When they thinned a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare, as if to let in the light to a shady place) they were to offer a hog by way of expiation, and pray the god or goddess to whom it was sacred to be propitious to them, their house, and family, and children. Should not every grove be regarded as a lucus or