in Volga, Jaxares, Oxus, and
those great rivers; at the mouth of Oby, or where? What vent the Mexican
lake hath, the Titicacan in Peru, or that circular pool in the vale of
Terapeia, of which Acosta _l. 3. c. 16._ hot in a cold country, the spring
of which boils up in the middle twenty foot square, and hath no vent but
exhalation: and that of _Mare mortuum_ in Palestine, of Thrasymene, at
Peruzium in Italy: the Mediterranean itself. For from the ocean, at the
Straits of Gibraltar, there is a perpetual current into the Levant, and so
likewise by the Thracian Bosphorus out of the Euxine or Black Sea, besides
all those great rivers of Nile, Po, Rhone, &c. how is this water consumed,
by the sun or otherwise? I would find out with Trajan the fountains of
Danube, of Ganges, Oxus, see those Egyptian pyramids, Trajan's bridge,
_Grotto de Sybilla_, Lucullus's fishponds, the temple of Nidrose, &c.
(And, if I could, observe what becomes of swallows, storks, cranes,
cuckoos, nightingales, redstarts, and many other kind of singing birds,
water-fowls, hawks, &c. some of them are only seen in summer, some in
winter; some are observed in the [3021]snow, and at no other times, each
have their seasons. In winter not a bird is in Muscovy to be found, but at
the spring in an instant the woods and hedges are full of them, saith
[3022]Herbastein: how comes it to pass? Do they sleep in winter, like
Gesner's Alpine mice; or do they lie hid (as [3023]Olaus affirms) "in the
bottom of lakes and rivers, _spiritum continentes_? often so found by
fishermen in Poland and Scandia, two together, mouth to mouth, wing to
wing; and when the spring comes they revive again, or if they be brought
into a stove, or to the fireside." Or do they follow the sun, as Peter
Martyr _legat Babylonica l. 2._ manifestly convicts, out of his own
knowledge; for when he was ambassador in Egypt, he saw swallows, Spanish
kites, [3024]and many such other European birds, in December and January
very familiarly flying, and in great abundance, about Alexandria, _ubi
floridae tunc arbores ac viridaria_. Or lie they hid in caves, rocks, and
hollow trees, as most think, in deep tin-mines or sea-cliffs, as [3025]Mr.
Carew gives out? I conclude of them all, for my part, as [3026]Munster doth
of cranes and storks; whence they come, whither they go, _incompertum
adhuc_, as yet we know not. We see them here, some in summer, some in
winter; "their coming and going is sure in the night: in