Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/155

 Cliap. 95.] Y£5fTS IN THE EABTH. 121 island Cea it "has seized on 30,000 paces, which were sud- denly torn off, with many persons on them. In Sicily also the halt' of the city of Tyndaris, and all the part of Italy which is wanting^ ; in like manner it carried off Eleusina in Boeotia'. CHAP. 95. (93.) — or tents^ in the eaeth. But let us say no more of earthquakes and of whatever may be regarded as the sepulchres of cities**; let us rather speak of the wonders of the earth than of the crimes of nature. But, by Hercules ! the history of the heavens them- selves would not be more difficult to relate : — the abundance of metals, so various, so rich, so prolific, rising up^ during so many ages ; when, throughout all the world, so much is, every day, destroyed by fire, by waste, by shipwreck, by wars, and by frauds ; and while so much is consumed by luxury and by such a number of people : — the figures on gems, so multiplied in their forms ; the variously-coloured spots on certain stones, and the whiteness of others, excluding everything except light : — the virtues of medicinal springs, and the perpetual fires bursting out in so many places, for so many ages : — the exhalation of deadly vapours, either emitted from caverns^, or from certain unhealthy districts ; some of them fatal to birds alone, as at Soracte, a district near the city-^ ; others to all animals, except to man^, while 1 " Spatiiim intelligit, fretumve, quo Sicilia nunc ab Italia dispescitur." Hardouin in Lemaire, i. 419. - See Strabo, ix. 3 "Spiracula." ^ "Busta urbium." ° " Suboriens," as M. Alexandre explains it, "renascensj" Lemaire, i. 420. ' 6 " Scrobibus ;" " aut quum terra fossis excavatur, ut in Pomptina palude, aut per naturales liiatus." Alexancb-e in Loniaire, i. 420. 7 This circumstance is mentioned by Seneca, IS'at. Qua:-st. vi. 28, as oc- cun'ing " pluribus Italiae locis ; " it may be ascribed to the exhalations from volcanos being raised up into the atmosphere. It does not appear that there is, at present, any cavern in Mount Soracte which emits mephitic vapours. But the circumstance of Soracte being regarded sacred to Apollo, as we leani fi-om our author, vii. 2, and from Virgil, yEn. xi. 785, may lead us to conjecture that something of the kind may fonnerly have existed there. s The author may probably refer to the well-known Grotto del Cane,