Book 8
4
And Polybius, in the thirty-fourth book of his Histories, says that behind Pyrene, as far as the river Narbo, the whole country is a plain, through which the rivers Illiberis and Rhoscynus proceed, flowing through cities of the same name as themselves, which are inhabited by some of the Celtæ; and in this plain he says that the above-mentioned fossil fish are also found. And he says that the soil of that lain is light, and that a great quantity of the herb agrostis grows in it; and that beneath it, as the soil is sandy for a depth of two or three cubits, the water flows, which wanders away from these rivers; and so the fish, too, leaving the rivers, and proceeding underground, in the course of these erratic underflowings, in quest of food (for they are exceedingly fond of the root of the agrostis), have caused the whole plain to be full of subterranean fish, which people catch when they dig up the plain. And among the Indians, says Theophrastus, there are fish which go forth out of the rivers over the land, and then, leaping back, return again to the water, just like frogs; being in appearance very like the fish which are called maxini.
