92 
plint's NATTJBAL HISTOE-T. 
[Book 11. 
and titles, continuing our names, and extending our memory, 
in opposition to the shortness of life. In our anger we im- 
precate her on those who are now no more\ as if we were 
ignorant that .she is the only being who can never be angry 
with man. The water passes into showers, is concreted into 
hail, swells into rivers, is precipitated in torrents ; the air is 
condensed into clouds, rages in squalls ; but the earth, kind, 
mild, and indulgent as she is, and always ministering to the 
wants of mortals, how many things do we compel her to 
produce spontaneously ! What odours and flowers, nutritive 
juices, forms and colours ! With what good faith does she 
render back all that has been entrusted to her ! It is the 
vital spirit which must bear the blame of producing noxious 
animals ; for the earth is constrained to receive the seeds of 
them, and to support them when they are produced. The 
fault lies in the evil nature which generates them. The 
earth will no longer harbour a serpent after it has attacked 
any one^, and thus she even demands punishment in the 
name of those who are indifferent about ifc themselves^. She 
pours forth a profusion of medicinal plants, and is always 
producing something for the use of man. We may even 
suppose, that it is out of compassion to us that she has or- 
dained certain substances to be poisonous, in order that when 
we are weary of life, hunger, a mode of death the most foreign 
to the kind disposition of the earth'*, might not consume us 
by a slow decay, that precipices might not lacerate our 
mangled bodies, that the unseemly punishment of the halter 
may not torture us, by stopping the breath of one who seeks 
1 We have an example in Martial, v. 34. 9, of the imprecation which 
has been common in all ages : 
MoUia nec rigidus cespes tegat ossa, nec ihi 
Terra gravis fueris ; 
and in Seneca's Hippolytus, suh finem : 
..... istam terra defossam premat, 
Grravisque tellus impio capiti incubet. 
2 The author refers to this opinion, xxix. 23, when describaig the effects 
of venomous animals. 
3 inertium ; " ultione abstiaentium," as explained by Alexandre, in 
Lemaire, i. 367. 
" Quod mortis genus a terrse meritis et benignitate valde abhorret." 
Hardouin, in Lemaire, i. 367. 
