Isatis herba

everything is occupied by the density of
the seeds. And afterwards, the winter
being finished or the snow having
melted, they cover the sowing with
harrowing, breaking the larger clods
in the meantime with a wooden mal-
let, as they would be an impediment
to the newly emerging crop, just as
Virgil says:
He who follows, having cast the seed,
the fields at close quarters, and
breaks the mounds of the ill-fertile
sand.

It is a thing almost not unlike a
miracle that, in the winter time and
with the following frost, when the
inhabitants of other regions either
indulge their own nature, or lie
sluggish in idleness shut up in their
huts, or beat out grain on the thresh-
ing floor under a roof, our farmers
entrust the seeds to the earth in the
midst of the frosts. But it happens
very often that, on account of un-
timely spring cold, and especially on
account of burning winds, and par-
ticularly at that time when it has
not yet driven its roots deep into the
earth, but when it has not yet