NOTES 



329 



others with neither taste nor smell, but rapidly fatal to the drinker 

 by immediately hardening and binding the intestines. Refer- 

 ence is also included to certain kinds of springs, of which the 

 volcanic tracts of Italy supply good examples. Such were those 

 which killed visitors who peered down into the caverns where 

 their waters lurk, and suffocated birds that flew over them. 

 Doubtless many tales were told of the effects of such emanations 

 of carbonic acid gas, like that of the Grotto del Cane which, near 

 Naples, still preserves their classic reputation (134, 261). Again, 

 the same volcanic districts furnished instances of warm, sometimes 

 even boiling, springs, and in alluding to them the author quotes 

 the opinion of Empedocles, who was doubtless familiar with them 

 in Sicily. To complete his record of marvels, the author cites 

 some lakes on which islands float to and fro, of which good illus- 

 trations, due to a matted growth of vegetation, were then well 

 known in the Vadimonian Lake (Lago di Bassano), 1 and he 

 mentions other lakes in which he had equal faith, with water so 

 heavy that brickbats would float upon it, and nothing, however 

 heavy, not even hard solid stones, would go to the bottom. 



Seneca is inclined to agree with some philosophers that 

 certain rivers of peculiar and inexplicable character were created 

 along with the world, and he specially cites the Danube and 

 Nile as examples, these vast streams being too remarkable to have 

 had the same origin as other rivers. Accordingly he reserves 

 the Nile for consideration in a later part of his volume (166). 

 There is another kind of water which, with his Stoic brethren, 

 he places at the beginning of the world the great ocean and 

 every sea that flows from it between the lands. Yet he found no 

 place in any part of the treatise for a discussion of the phenomena 

 of the ocean. 



The Book closes with a vivid description of the probable 

 catastrophe by which the end of the world will be brought about. 

 That the present condition of things will be swept away to make 

 room for another and better race of men he assumes as a matter 

 of certainty, and he tries to picture by what physical means the 

 destruction will probably be effected. He is certain that it will 

 be by no one agency, but that all the energies of the world will 

 be called forth to compass the destruction of the human race, 

 nothing being difficult to nature, especially when she is hurrying 

 towards her end. The picture which is given of the progress of 

 the great deluge forms by far the most striking piece of writing 

 in the volume. It ends somewhat inartistically in some gibing 

 criticism of a quotation from Ovid. But the poetic afflatus had 

 not been quite quenched. The author immediately returns to 

 1 Pliny, Hist, Nat. ii. 96. Pliny the Younger, Epist. viii. 20. 



