xix PROPERTIES OF WATERS 133 



limits are incalculable, just as is the duration of 

 rivers and fountains themselves. 



XX 



FOR the variety of taste in water there are four i 

 causes. The first is the kind of soil through which 

 it flows. The second also depends on the soil when 

 the water arises from transmutation of it. The 

 third is from air which has been transformed into 

 water. The fourth comes from some taint which 

 water often contracts when injuriously affected by 

 foreign bodies. These causes impart to water, first, 2 

 variety of taste, then medicinal power, its heavy 

 pestilential smell, its lightness and heaviness, its 

 heat and its excessive astringency. It is affected by 

 its passage through ground full of sulphur, or nitre 

 ( = saltpetre), or bitumen. If the water is tainted in 

 this way, the drinking of it endangers life. This is 

 the explanation of a passage in Ovid : 



The Ciconians have a river a draught of whose waters turns into 



stone 

 The bowels ; which mantles in marble all that it touches. 



The river in question has medicinal properties, its 3 

 mud being of the kind that glues together and 

 hardens the bodies it encounters. Just as the dust 

 at Puteoli becomes stone if it touches water, so, 

 contrariwise, if the water of this river touches a 

 solid body, it adheres and gets firmly affixed to it. 

 This is the reason why objects thrown into the 

 same lake 1 are constantly found to be turned to 

 stone when they are taken out. This occurs at 

 several places in Italy ; you may put into the water 



1 The allusion is not quite evident. 



