Plutarch's Natural Questions (22-24)

BECAUSE the flesh of those parts of the body which concoct aliment the best is sweetest; and that concocts best which transpires most by motion and exercise. But the bear uses the fore-feet most in going and running, and in managing of things, as it were with hands.

WHETHER the dogs, as Empedocles says, with noses find the steps of all wild beasts, and draw in those effluvia which the beasts leave in the ground; but the various smells of plants and flowers lying over the footsteps do in spring-time obscure and confound them, and put the dogs to a loss at winding them? Therefore about Etna in Sicily no man keeps any hunting dogs, because abundance of wild marjoram flourishes and grows there the year round, and the perpetual flagrancy of the place destroys the scent of the wild beasts. There is also a tale, how Proserpine, as she was gathering flowers thereabout, was ravished by Pluto; therefore people, revering that place as an asylum, do not catch any creature that feeds thereabout.

WHETHER for the foresaid cause? For the full moons bring down the dews; and therefore Alcman calls dew the daughter of Jove and Luna in a verse of his,

Fed by the dew, bred by the Moon and Jove.

For dew is a weak and languid rain, and there is but little heat in the moon; which draws water from the earth, as the sun does; but because it cannot raise it on high, it soon lets it fall.