XVI.] OF CAVERNS AND TREES. 357
enthusiasm, for he regards it as the most remarkable cavern he
had ever seen, on account of its size and height, of the amount
of light which penetrates into it, rendering unnecessary the use
of torches, and of the stalagmites which are formed on the floor
by the dripping from the roof—all which details correspond to
its present appearance. From describing this spot he proceeds,
with his usual fondness for digression, to notice three other
caves with which he was acquainted in the west of Asia Minor—
one called Steunos in Phrygia. which was consecrated to Cybele,
another by the town of Themisonium in the neighbourhood of
Laodiceia, in which the inhabitants took refuge at the time of
the invasion of the country by the Gauls, and a third ne£i
Magnesia ad Maeandrum, which was famous for a wonder-
working statue of Apollo of great antiquity1. Pausanias" also
displays great interest in trees. Thus he notices
the immense height reached by the cypresses at
Psophis in Arcadia2, and the girth of the plane trees near
Pharae in Achaia, within the hollow trunks of which banquets
used to be held3; and he also mentions those which he believed
to" be the most ancient trees existing in the Greek sanctuaries;
the four most conspicuous in that respect being the agnus castus
which grew in the temple of Hera at Samos, the sacrecl oak at
Dodona, and the olive trees in the Athenian Acropolis and at
Delos*. The same taste leads him occasionally to remark on
the vegetation of certain districts, as, for instance, where he
describes the vast extent of oak-forest which lay between Man-
tineia and Tegea, and was called Pelagus, apparently from the
aspect of the sea-like expanse of waving trees5. He mentions
also that cotton, an extremely rare product in
* • • TIT • i • t TT Cotton.
ancient tunes, was grown in Elis in his day. He
calls it 'byssus/ but clearly distinguishes it from both flax and
hemp, and adds that it was not found elsewhere in Greece*.
But, notwithstanding that, Pausanias has contributed in
these and other ways to the enlargement of our geographical
*. Pausan. 10. 32. 2—7. 2 8. 24. 7. * 7. 22. i.
4 8. 23, 5. B 8. n. r.
6 5. 5- 2; cp. 6. 26. 6, and £. Curtius, Peloponnesus^ vol. i, p. 438; vol. 2,
p. 10.