132 PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. in 



makes me sometimes exceed the bounds of decency 

 and use words at random. These drivellers are 

 not satisfied to bring teeth, and palate, and stomach 

 to the revel ; they make their very eyes partners 

 in the gluttony. 



XIX 



1 BUT to return to my subject. Here is a proof I 

 have to give you that in the underground recesses 

 are concealed great quantities of water which 

 abound in filthy fish. Any time that the water 

 bursts out, it brings in its train a huge crowd of 

 creatures foul to sight, disgusting and noxious to 

 taste. At any rate, once, near the city of Hydissus 

 in Caria, a flood of underground water threw up to 

 the light of day a number of strange fishes, and all 



2 who ate them died. And no wonder. Their bodies 

 were full of oil from their long inactivity ; they had 

 been fattened in the darkness without exercise, and 

 deprived of that light whence health is derived. A 

 further proof that fish may be produced in those 

 depths of earth is afforded by the breeding of eels 

 in shady places ; they also are a heavy diet through 

 their want of exercise, especially if a considerable 

 depth of mud has hidden them quite out of sight. 



3 So then the earth contains not only veins of water 

 by the union of which rivers may be formed, but 

 also streams of very great size. In some cases their 

 channel is concealed throughout, until they are 

 swallowed up in some cavern ; others of them well 

 up in the bottom of some lake. Everybody knows 

 that some marshes have no bottom. What is the 

 point of my argument ? It shows plainly that 

 mighty rivers have here unending supplies whose 



