BOOK XI. xcvii. 241-XCIX. 244 



from Liguria, chiefly made of sheep's milk, Sarsina 

 cheese from Umbria, and Luni cheese from the 

 borderland of Tuscany and Liguria — this cheese 

 is remarkable for its size, in fact it is actually made 

 up to the weight of 1000 pounds the cheese ; but 

 nearest to Rome is the Vestinian, and the kind from 

 the Caedician Plain is the most approved. Herds 

 of goats also have their special reputation for cheese, 

 in the case of fresh cheese especially when smoke 

 increases its flavour, as with the supremely desirable 

 cheese made in the city itself; for the cheese of the 

 GalUc goats always has a strong medicinal taste. 

 But of cheeses from over seas the Bithynian is quite 

 famous. That pastures contain salt, even where it 

 is not visible, is chiefly detected from the fact that 

 all cheese as it gets old turns saltish, just as cheeses 

 steeped in vinegar and th}Tne undoubtedly return 

 to their original fresh flavour. It is recorded that 

 Zoroaster in the desert Uved for twenty years on 

 cheese that had been so treated as not to be affected 

 by age. 



XCVIII. Man is the only land two-footed animal, PeaaiarUies 

 and the only one that has a throat, shoulders instead m man!^ 

 of forequarters Hke the others, and elbows. In 

 animals possessing hands, the hands only have 

 flesh inside, the outside consisting of sinews and skin. 



XCIX. Some people have six fingers on each Thefingera 

 hand. It has come down to us that the two daughters 

 of a man of patrician family named Marcus Coranius 

 were called the Miss Six-Fingers on this account, 

 and that Volcatius Sedigitus was distinguished in 

 poetry. The human fingers have three joints and 

 the thumb two, and it bends in the opposite direction 

 to all the fingers, stretching out by itself on a slant, 



585 



