92 plint's natfeal histoet. [Book II. and titles, continuing our names, and extending our memory m opposition to the shortness of life. In our anger we imi precate her on those who are now no more as il^ 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 squaUs ; 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 ; lor the earth is constrained to receive the seeds of them, and to support them when they are produced. The lault lies m 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 o± those who are indifferent about it 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 forei^ 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 imseemly punishment of the halter may not torture us, by stopping the breath of one who seeks hi Z^ ^'""^^ ^"^ ^^^"^f}^ ^ ^^^*'^^' ^- ^^- 9' of the imprecation which iias been common m all ages : vvn^uu Mollia nee rigidus cespes tegat ossa, nee iUi Terra gravis fueris ; and in Seneca's Hippolytus, suhjinem : istam terra defossam premat, Gravisque tellus imi^io capiti incubet. 2 The author refers to this opinion, xxix. 23, when describing the effects or venomous anmials. ° ci^ci^to lH'i^'lsCT.""""™ abstinentium," as explained by Alexandre, in
