92 plint's natfeal histoet. [Book II. 



and titles, continuing our names, and extending our memory 

 m opposition to the shortness of life. In our anger we imi 

 precate her on those who are now no more\ as il^ we were 

 Ignorant that .she is the only being who can never be angry 

 with man. The water passes into showers, is concreted into 

 hail swells into rivers, is precipitated in torrents ; the air is 

 condensed into clouds, rages in squaUs ; but the earth, kind 

 mild, and indulgent as she is, and always ministering to the 

 wants of mortals, how many things do we compel her to 

 produce spontaneously ! "What odours and flowers, nutritive 

 juices, forms and colours ! With what good faith does she 

 render back all that has been entrusted to her ' It is the 

 vital spirit which must bear the blame of producing noxious 

 animals ; lor the earth is constrained to receive the seeds of 

 them, and to support them when they are produced. The 

 lault lies m the evil nature which generates them The 

 earth will no longer harbour a serpent after it has attacked 

 any one% and thus she even demands punishment in the 

 name o± those who are indifferent about it themselves^ She 

 pours forth a profusion of medicinal plants, and is always 

 producing something for the use of man. "We may even 

 suppose, that it is out of compassion to us that she has or- 

 dained certain substances to be poisonous, in order that when 

 we are weary of life, hunger, a mode of death the most forei^ 

 to the kind disposition of the earth^ might not consume us 

 by a slow decay, that precipices might not lacerate our 

 mangled bodies, that the imseemly punishment of the halter 

 may not torture us, by stopping the breath of one who seeks 



hi Z^ ^'""^^ ^"^ ^^^"^f}^ ^ ^^^*'^^' ^- ^^- 9' of the imprecation which 

 iias been common m all ages : vvn^uu 



Mollia nee rigidus cespes tegat ossa, nee iUi 

 Terra gravis fueris ; 

 and in Seneca's Hippolytus, suhjinem : 



istam terra defossam premat, 



Gravisque tellus imi^io capiti incubet. 



2 The author refers to this opinion, xxix. 23, when describing the effects 

 or venomous anmials. ° ci^ci^to 



lH'i^'lsCT.""""™ abstinentium," as explained by Alexandre, in 



