19.2
What, don’t you understand it? How can I, when I don’t know what kind of soil to plant in, nor how deep a hole to dig, nor how broad, nor how much of the plant should be buried, nor how it must be set in the ground to grow best?
19.3
Come then, learn whatever you don’t know. I am sure you have seen the sort of trenches they dig for plants. Yes, often enough. Did you ever see one more than three feet deep? No, of course not—nor more than two and a half. Well, did you ever see one more than three feet broad? Of course not, nor more than two feet. Come then, answer this question too.
19.4
Did you ever see one less than a foot deep? Never less than a foot and a half, of course. For the plants would come out of the ground when it is stirred about them if they were put in so much too shallow.
19.5
Then you know this well enough, Socrates, that the trenches are never more than two and a half feet deep, nor less than a foot and a half. A thing so obvious as that can’t escape one’s eyes.
19.6
Again, can you distinguish between dry and wet ground by using your eyes? Oh, I should think that the land round Lycabettus and any like it is an example of dry ground, and the low-lying land at Phalerum and any like it of wet.
