82 SPRINGS, RIVERS, CANALS, LAKES, 



together, and are in the shade all the day afterward. If, therefore, 

 it happens that any particular fountain takes its rise from any of 

 these reservoirs of snow, it will naturally begin to flow on such 

 hours of the day as the snow begins to melt ; but as soon as the sun 

 leaves it again to freeze and harden, the fountain dries up and re- 

 ceives no more supplies till about the same time the neM day \ 

 the heat of the sun acain sets the snows a-runnin^ that fall into the 



V. 



same little conduits, traces and canals, and by consequence bitrak 

 out and discover themselves always in the same place. EDITOR. 



2. Comian Spring. 

 PLINY TO LICIN1US. 



T HAVE brought you, as a present, out of the country, a query 

 tvhich well deserves the consideration of your extensive knowledge* 

 There is a spring which rises in a MJgbottring mountain, and, 

 running among the rocks, is received into a little banquetting* 

 room, from whence, after the force of its current is a little restrained, 

 it falls into the Larian lake*. The nature of this sprii; 

 tremely surprising : it ebbs and flows regularly three times a day. 



* Now the Lno di Tome, in the duchy of Milan. Covio or Comum is flip 

 city in which the younger Pliny was born ; and upon the banks of the lake 

 hi* elegant villa was situated. 



In the Natnral History of the elder Pliny, book IT. chap. ciii. we arc also 

 told of a. fountain in the vicinity of the same lake which ebbs and flew - 

 hour; and Catani, and various other writers nave conceived that both <! 

 tions refer to one common fountain, and have consequently pretended to 

 detect a palpable disagreement between the elder Pliny and his neph 

 Catani supporting the testimony of the former from ocnlar observation, the 

 fountain being, as he tells u.s, still in existence in his own time, and denomi- 

 nated Pliny's well. It is by no means certain, however, that the fountain 

 described by each of these writers is the same, nor does its character, as civen 

 by the one, very strictly accord with that Driven by the other. The elder Pliny 

 expressly denominates it " a large and broad well ;" while the latter repre- 

 sents it as a small enclosed well ; or in his own words " a well rereived into 

 a little hanquetting-rnora." The point however is not of consequence. There 

 are various other wells of a similar kind which are noticed by the rider Pliny r 

 and especially that of Jupiter, in Dodona, of \\hich the reader will inert with 

 a farther account in another section of this chapter. linn OR. 



