122 Flint's natueal histoet. [Book II. 



others are so to man also, as in the country of Sinuessa and 

 Puteoli. They are generally called vents, and, by some 

 persons, Charon's sewers, from their exhaling a deadly 

 vapour. Also at Amsanctum, in the country of the Hirpini, 

 at the temple of Mephitis \ there is a place which kills all 

 those who enter it. And the same takes place at Hierapolis in 

 Asia^, where no one can enter with safety, except the priest 

 of the great Mother of the Gods. In other places there are 

 prophetic caves, where those who are intoxicated with the 

 vapour which rises from them predict future events^, as at 

 the most noble of all oracles, Delphi. In which cases, what 

 mortal is there who can assign any other cause, than the 

 divine power of nature, which is everywhere diffused, and 

 thus bursts forth in various places ? 



CHAP. 96. (94.) — OF CEETAIN LAITDS WHICH AEE ALWAYS 

 SHAKING, AND OF FLOATING ISLANDS. 



There are certain lands which shake wlien any one passes 

 over them^ ; as in the territory of the Gabii, not far from the 

 city of Kome, there are about 200 acres which shake when 

 cavalry passes over it : the same thing takes place at Eeate. 



(95.) There are certain islands which are always floating ", 

 as in the territory of the Caecubum®, and of the above-men- 

 tioned Reate, of Mutina, and of Statonia. In the lake of 

 Vadimonis and the waters of Cutiliae there is a dark wood, 

 which is never seen in the same place for a day and a night 

 together. In Lydia, the islands named Calaminae are not 



where, in consequence of a stratum of carbonic acid gas, which occupies 

 the lower part of the cave onlv, dogs and other animals, whose mouths 

 are near the ground, are instantly suffocated. 



1 Celebrated in the well-known lines of Virgil, JEn. vii. 563 et seq., sub 

 the " ssevi spiracuia Ditis." 



2 Apuleius gives us an account of this place from his own observation ; 

 Do Mundo, § 729. See also Strabo, xii. 



3 See Aristotle, De Mundo, cap. iv. 



* " Ad ingressum ambidantium, et equonim cursus, terrse quoque tre- 

 mere sentiuntur in Brabantino agro, quae Belgii pars, et circa S. 

 Audoniari fanum." Hardouin in Lemau-e, i. 421, 422. 



* See Seneca, Nat. Qiisest. iii. 25. 



^ Martial speaks of the marshy nature of the Caecuban district, xiii. 115. 

 Most of the places mentioned in this chapter are illustrated by tho 

 remarks of Hardouin j Lemaire, i. 422, 423. 



