Grain, however, may be long kept in the open air in climates much less dry than that of Egypt, without injury, except to the superficial layers; for moisture does not penetrate to a great depth in a heap of grain once well dried, and kept well aired. When Louis IX was making his preparations for his campaign in the East, he had large quantities of wine and grain purchased in the Island of Cyprus, and stored up, for two years, to await his arrival. "When we were come to Cyprus," says Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, §§ 72, 73, "we found there greate foison of the Kynge's purveyance. * * The wheate and the barley they had piled up in greate heapes in the feeldes, and to looke vpon, they were like vnto mountaynes; for the raine, the whyche hadde beaten vpon the wheate now a longe whyle, had made it to sproute on the toppe, so that it seemed as greene grasse. And whanne they were mynded to carrie it to Egypte, they brake that sod of greene herbe, and dyd finde under the same the wheate and the barley, as freshe as yf menne hadde but nowe thrashed it."
[187] Étude sur les Eaux au point de vue des Inondations, p. 91.
[188] Économie Rurale, ii, chap. xx, § 4, pp. 756-759. See also p. 733.
[189] Jacini, speaking of the great Italian lakes, says: "A large proportion of the water of the lakes, instead of discharging itself by the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, the Mincio, filters through the silicious strata which underlie the hills, and follows subterranean channels to the plain, where it collects in the fontanili, and being thence conducted into the canals of irrigation, becomes a source of great fertility."—La Proprietà Fondiaria, etc., p. 144.
[190] Météorologie, German translation by Emsmann, p. 605.
[191] Handbuch der Physischen Geographie, p. 658.
[192] Annales des Ponts et Chaussées, 1854, 1st sémestre, pp. 21 et seqq. See the comments of Vallès on these observations, in his Études sur les Inondations, pp. 441 et seqq.
[193] The passage in Pliny is as follows: "Nascuntur fontes, decisis plerumque silvis, quos arborum alimenta consumebant, sicut in Hæmo, obsidente Gallos Cassandro, quum valli gratia cecidissent. Plerumque vero damnosi torrentes corrivantur, detracta collibus silva continere nimbos ac digerere consueta."—Nat. Hist., xxxi, 30.
Seneca cites this case, and another similar one said to have been observed at Magnesia, from a passage in Theophrastus, not to be found in the extant works of that author; but he adds that the stories are incredible, because shaded grounds abound most in water: ferè aquosissima sunt quæcumque umbrosissima.—Quæst. Nat., iii, 11. See Appendix, [No. 26].
[194] "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated every day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince himself, without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of Meudon? Let him, after a few rainy days, pass along the Chevreuse road, which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the same on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain filled with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded soil, long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed its office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have discharged in a few hours a quantity of water, which the ditch on the right requires several days to receive and carry down to the valley."—Clavé, Études, etc., pp. 53, 54.