NOTES. XXXIX 



sscrita en la Jamaica, 1503 ; Navarrete, t. i. p. 309. Compare my Examen 

 Critique, t. i. p. 70, and 109 ; t. ii. p. 38 44, and on the proper duration 

 of the Tarshish voyage, Keil, S. 106. 



( 183 ) p. 133. Ctesise Cnidii Operum Keliquise, ed. Felix Baehr, 1824, 

 cap. iv. and xii. p. 248, 271, and 300. But the accounts collected hy the 

 physician at the Persian court from native sources, and therefore not altoge- 

 ther to he rejected, relate to districts in the north of India, and from these 

 the gold of the Daradas must have come to Abhira, the mouth of the Indus, 

 and the coast of Malabar, by many circuitous routes. (Compare my Asie 

 Centrale, t. i. p. 157, and Lassen, ind. Alterthumskunde, Bd. i. S. 5.) Is it 

 not probable that the wonderful story repeated by Ctesias, of an Indian spring, 

 at the bottom of which malleable iron was found when the fluid gold had run 

 off, was based on a misunderstood account of a foundry ? The molten iron 

 was taken for gold from its colour ; and when the yellow colour had disap- 

 peared in cooling, the black mass of iron was found underneath. 



( 184 ) p. 134. Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. cap. 86 and 111, p. 175 and 225, 

 Bekk. 



( 185 ) p, 135. Die Etrusker, by Otfried MiUler, Abth. ii. S. 350 ; Niebuhr, 

 Romische Geschichte, Th. ii. S. 380. 



( 186 ) p. 135. A story was formerly repeated in Germany after Father 

 Angelo Cortenovis, that the tomb of the hero of Clusium, Lars Porsena, 

 described by Varro, ornamented with a bronze hat and bronze pendent chains, 

 was an apparatus for atmospherical electricity, or for conducting lightning ; 

 (as were, according to Michaelis, the metal points on Solomon's temple;) 

 but the tale obtained currency at a time when men were much inclined to 

 attribute to ancient nations the remains of a supernaturally revealed primitive 

 knowledge which was soon after obscured. The most important ancient notice 

 of the relations between lightning and conducting metals (a fact not difficult 

 of discovery), still appears to me to be that of Ctesias (Indica, cap. 4, p. 169, 

 ed. Lion; p. 248, ed. Baehr). He had possessed two iron swords, presents 

 from the king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and from his mother Parysatis, which, 

 when planted in the earth, averted clouds, hail, and strokes of lightning. He 

 had himself seen the operation, for the king had twice made the experiment 

 before his eyes." The exact attention paid by the Etruscans to the meteoro- 

 logical processes of the atmosphere in all that deviated from the ordinary 

 course of phenomena, makes it certainly to be lamented that nothing has come 

 down to us from their Fulgural books. The epochs of the appearance of great 

 comets, of the fall of meteoric stones, and of showers of falling stars, would 



