Chap. 23.] 
MODES OF TESTING WATER. 
485 
to the water at Troezen. As to the nitrous^^ and salso-acid^ 
waters which are found in the deserts, persons travelling across 
towards the Eed Sea render them potable in a couple of hours 
by the addition of polenta, which they use also as food. 
Those springs are more particularly condemned which secrete 
mud,^ or which give a bad complexion to persons who drink 
thereof. It is a good plan, too, to observe if water leaves 
stains upon copper vessels ; if leguminous vegetables boil with 
difficulty in it ; if, when gently decanted, it leaves an earthy 
deposit ; or if, when boiled, it covers the vessel with a thick 
crust. ^ 
It is a fault also in water,^* not only to have a bad smell,* 
but to have any flavour^ at all, even though it be a flavour 
pleasant and agreeable in itself, or closely approaching, as we 
often find the case, the taste of milk. Water, to be truly 
wholesome, ought to resemble air^ as much as possible. There 
is only one'' spring of water in the whole universe, it is said, 
that has an agreeable smell, that of Chabura, namely, in Me- 
sopotamia : the people give a fabulous reason for it, and say 
that it is because Juno^ bathed there. Speaking in general 
terms, water, to be wholesome, should have neither taste nor 
smell. 
CHAP. 23. THE MODES OF TESTINO WATER. 
Some persons judge of the wholesomeness of water through 
the agency of a balance :^ their pains, however, are expended 
to little purpose, it being but very rarely that one water is 
Waters, probably, impregnated with mineral alkali. As to the "ni- 
trum " of Pliny, see c. 46 of this Book, 
1 Salmacidas." ^ <<-C8ennm." 
^ Also, Ajasson says, to observe whether soap wiil melt in it. If it Avill 
not, it is indicative of the presence of selenite. 
^* As drinking water. 
* As Plautus says of women, Mostell, A. i. S. 3 — They smell best, 
when they smell of nothing at all." ^ See B. xv. c. 32. 
^ In purity and tastelessness. As Ajasson observes, Pliny could hardly 
appreciate the correctness of this remark, composed as water is of two 
gases, oxygen and hydrogen. 
Pausanias and Athenseus mention also the well of Mothone in Pelopon- 
nesus, the water of which exhaled the odour of the perfumes of Cyzicus. 
Such water, however, must of necessity be impure. 
s More probably Astarte, Fee thinks, Juno being unknown in Mesopo- 
tamia. 
^ " Statera." Ajasson remarks that it does not require an instrument 
vert/ nicely adjusted to indicate the difference in weight between pure and 
