116 History of Nature. [BoOK II. 



CHAPTER LXXII. 



The Gnomonic Art of the same Matter : and also of the first 



Dial 



ALSO the Instruments serving for the Hours will not 

 serve for all Places : but in every 300 Stadia, or 500 at the 

 farthest, the Shadows that the Sun casteth are changed ; and 

 therefore the Shadow of the Style in the Dial, which they 

 call the Gnomon, in Egypt, at Noon, in the equinoctial Day, 

 is little more in length than half the Gnomon. But in the 

 city of Rome the Shadow wanteth the ninth Part of the 

 Gnomon. In the Town of Ancona it is longer by a thirty- 

 fifth Part. But in that Part of Italy which is called Venice, 

 at the same Time and Hour the Shadow and the Gnomon 

 are of one Length. 



CHAPTER LXXIII. 

 Where and when there be no Shadows. 



IN like Manner they say, that in the Town of Syene 

 (which is above Alexandria fifty Stadia), at Noon, in the 

 midst of Summer, there is no Shadow : and that for Experi- 

 ment thereof, a Well that was sunk in the Ground was lighted 

 to the Bottom ; whereby it appeareth that the Sun at that 

 Time is directly over that Place. Which also at the same 

 Time happeneth in India, above the River Hypasis, as Onesi- 

 critus hath written. And it is known that in Berenice, a 

 City of the Trogloditse, and from thence 4820 Stadia in the 

 same Country, at the Town of Ptolemais (which was built at 

 first on the Border of the Red Sea, for the Pleasure of hunt- 

 ing Elephants), the same is to be seen forty-five Days before 

 the Summer Solstice, and as long after : so that for the 

 Space of ninety Days all Shadows are cast toward the South. 

 Again, in the Island of Meroe, which is the capital Place of 

 the Ethiopian Nation, and is inhabited 5000 Stadia from 

 Syene, upon the River Nile, twice in the Year the Shadows 

 disappear ; which is, when the Sun is in the eighteenth De- 

 grees of Taurus , and in the fourteenth of Leo. In the Coun- 



