\ Chap. 95.] YEISTTS IK THE EABTH. 121 
'1 
island Cea it has seized on 30,000 paces, which were sud- 
denly torn off, with many persons on them. In Sicily also 
the half of the city of Tyndaris, and all the part of Italy 
which is wanting^ ; in like manner it carried off Eleusina in 
Boeotia^. 
CHAP. 95. (93.) — OE YEKTS^ IN THE EAETH. 
But let us say no more of earthquakes and of whatever 
may be regarded as the sepulchres of cities ; let us rather 
speak of the wonders of the earth than of the crimes of 
nature. But, by Hercules ! the history of the heavens them- 
selves would not be more difhcult to relate : — the abundance 
of metals, so various, so rich, so prolific, rising up^ during so 
many ages ; when, throughout all the world, so much is, 
every day, destroyed by fire, by waste, by shipwreck, by 
wars, and by frauds ; and while so much is consumed by 
luxury and by such a number of people : — the figures on 
gems, so multiplied in their forms ; the variously-coloured 
spots on certain stones, and the whiteness of others, excluding 
everything except light : — the virtues of medicinal springs, 
and the perpetual fires bursting out in so many places, for 
so many ages : — the exhalation of deadly vapours, either 
emitted from caverns^, or from certain unhealthy districts ; 
some of them fatal to birds alone, as at Soracte, a district 
near the city' ; others to all animals, except to man^, while 
1 " Spatmm intelligit, fretinnve, quo Sicilia nunc ab Italia dispescitur.'* 
Hai'douin in Lemaire, i. 419. 
2 See Strabo, ix. 
3 " Spiracula." ^ " Busta urbium." 
^ " Suboriens," as M. Alexandre explains it, "renascensj" Lemaire, 
i. 420. 
^ " Scrobibus ;" " aut quum terra fossis excavatur, tit in Pomptina 
paiude, aut per naturales hiatus." Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 420. 
7 This circumstance is mentioned by Seneca, Nat. Qusest. vi. 28, as oc- 
curring " pluribus Itahse locis ; " it may be ascribed to the exhalations from 
volcanos being raised up into the atmosphere. It does not appear that 
there is, at present, any cavern in Mount Soracte which emits mephitic 
vapours. But the ch^cumstance of Soracte being regarded sacred to 
Apollo, as we learn from our author, vii. 2, and from Virgil, iEn. xi. 785, 
may lead us to conjectm^e that something of the kind may formerly have 
existed there. 
s The author may probably refer to the weU-knowii G-rotto del Cane, 
