It is not only the quality of the soil and the unchanging influences of the climate that affect the nature of trees, but wet and showery weather also, temporarily at least. Indeed, the torrents very often bring down with them seeds, and sometimes we find those of unknown kinds even floating along. This took place in the territory of Cyrenaica, at the period when laser was first grown there, as we shall have occasion to mention when we speak of the nature of the various herbs.[1] A forest, too, sprang[2] up in the vicinity of the city of Cyrene, just after a shower of rain, of a dense, pitchy nature, about the year of the City of Rome 430.