Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/168

 134 Pliny's natural histoet. [Book II, Avajravofxevoy^ : it then increases and becomes full at mid- niglit, after which it again visibly decreases. In Illyricum there is a cold spring, over which if garments are spread they take fire. The pool of Jupiter Amnion, which is cold during the day, is warm during the night". In the country of the Troglodytae^ what they call the I'oimtain of the Sun about noon is fresh and very cold ; it then gradually (rrows warm, and, at midnight, becomes hot and saline ^ In the middle of the day, dimng summer, the source of the Po, as if reposing itself, is always diy^ In tlie island of Tenedos there is a spring, which, after the summer sol- stice, is full of water, from the third hour of the nio-ht to the sixth". The fountain Inopus, in the island of Delos decreases and mcreases in the same manner as the Nile' and also at the same periods^. There is a small island in the sea, o^^posite to the river Timavus, containing warm 1 "Quasi alternis requiescens, ac meridians : diem diffindens, utYarro loqmtur, msititia quiete." Hardouin in Lemau-e, i. 443. He says that there IS a smiilar kind of foimtam in Provence, eaUed Collis Martiensis - ihere has been considerable dijference of ophiion among the com^ ment^ators both as to the reading of the text and its interpretation, for wnch I shaU refer to the notes of Poinsmet, i. 307, of Hardouin and Alexandre, Lemau-e, i. 413, and of Eichelet, Ajasson ii 402 ^ We have^an account of the Troglodytae in a subsequent part of the work V. 5. The name is generaUy apphed by the ancients to a tribe of people inhabiting a portion of .Etliiopia, and is derived from the ch-cum- stance of their dwelhngs bemg composed of caverns ; a rpcoyX/} and Svvu^, Aiexancbe remarks, that the name Avas occasionaUy apphed to other tribes whose habitations were of the same kind ; Lemah-e, i. 443. They are re' ferred to by Q. Curtius as a tribe of the .Etliiopians, situated to the south ot Egypt and extending to the Red Sea, iv. 7. - Q^^^^'^i^^ gi^es nearly the same account of this fountain ^ The Po derives its water fi-om the torrents of the Ah^s, and is there- fore much affected by the melting of the snow or the great faUs of rain . which occm- at different seasons of the year ; but the daHy dhninution of the water, as stated by our author, is without foimdation. ^^"^f °^ ibi mtermittentem frustra qu^sivit el. Le ChevaHer, Yoyage de la Troade, 1. 1. p. 219." Lemah-e, i. 444. *^^ 7 St,abo in aUusion to this circumstance, remarks, that some persons wffh /llf^/*w °?'^''^'i ^^ supposing that this spring is connected with the Nile. We learn from Tournefort, that there is a weU of this mme m Delos, which he found to contain considerably more water in J anuary and February than in October, and which is supposed to be con- nected with the me or the Jordan : this, of coui-se, he regards as an idle