134 PLIIfT'S NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book II. 



Ava-^avofievoy^ : it then increases and becomes fall at mid- 

 night, after which it again visibly decreases. In Illyricum 

 there is a cold spring, over which if garments are spread 

 they take fire. The pool of Jupiter Ammon, which is cold 

 during the day, is warm during the night^. In the country 

 of the Troglodytae^, what they call the Fountain of the Sun, 

 about noon is fresh and very cold ; it then gradually grows 

 warm, and, at midnight, becomes hot and saline''. 



In the middle of the day, during summer, the source of 

 the Po, as if reposing itself, is always dry". In the island 

 of Tenedos there is a spring, which, after the summer sol- 

 stice, is full of water, from the third hour of the night to 

 the sixth®. The fountain Inopus, in the island of Delos, 

 decreases and increases in the same manner as the Nile, 

 and also at the same periods^. There is a small island in 

 the sea, opposite to the river Timavus, containing warm 



1 " Quasi altemis requiescens, ac meridians : diem diffindens, ut Varro 

 loqtiitur, insititia qtiiete." Hardouiii in Lemaire, i. 4i3. He says that 

 there is a similar kind of fountain in Provence, called CoUis Martiensis. 



2 There has been considerable difference of opinion among the com- 

 mentators, both as to the reading of the text and its interpretation, for 

 wliich I shall refer to the notes of Poinsinet, i. 307, of Hardouin and 

 Alexandre, Lemaire, i. 443, and of Richelet, Ajasson, ii. 402. 



3 We have an accoimt of the Troglodyta) in a subsequent part of the 

 work, V. 5. The name is generally apphed by the ancients to a tribe of 

 people inhabiting a portion of ^Ethiopia, and is derived from the circum- 

 stance of their dwellings being composed of caverns ; a rpwyXi) and Svvitt. 

 Alexandre remarks, that the name was occasionally apphed to other tribes, 

 whose habitations were of the same kind ; Lemaire, i. 443. They are re- 

 ferred to by Q. Curtius as a tribe of the ^Ethiopians, situated to the south 

 of Egypt and extending to the Red Sea, iv. 7. 



* Q. Curtius gives nearly the same account of this fountain. 



5 The Po derives its water from the torrents of the Alps, and is there- 

 fore much affected by the melting of the snow or the great falls of rain, 

 which occur at different seasons of the year ; but the daily diminution of 

 the water, as stated by our author, is without foundation. 



6 " Fontem ibi intermittentem frustra qusesivit cl. LeChevaUer, Voyage 

 de la Troade, t. i. p. 219." Lemaire, i. 444. 



7 Strabo, in allusion to this circumstance, remarks, that some persons 

 make it still more wonderful, by supposing that this spring is connected 

 with the Nile. We learn from Toumefort, that there is a well of this 

 name in Delos, which he found to contain considerably more water in 

 January and February than in October, and which is supposed to be con- 

 nected with the Nile or the Jordan : this, of course, he regards as an idlo 

 tale. Lemaire. 



