M. Denon also recals it in a letter addressed to M. Cadet, dated

April 19, 1783.
158 PREDICTIONS INFLUENCING AGRICULTURE.
About the same time, a subterraneous road was dug through the Alpine mountain, called Tenda, with the inten- tion of opening a direct communication between Piedmont and the province of Nice : the nature of the mountain rendered the soil easily penetrable to the filtration of waters. The same scholar announced the fast approach- ing falling in of the subterraneous passage, and solicited the suspension bf the works : but the engineers did not dream of profiting by his counsels until the event proved how well his fears had been founded.*
Anaximanderf foretold to the Lacedaemonians a sub- terranean concussion, and the fall of the Peak of Taygetes ; doubtless his foresight depended on the obser- vation of analogous symptoms as to the nature of the soil, as well as of phenomena which were the precursors of an earthquake. Anaximander, Pherecydes, the Peruvian observer, and our own countryman, were only philoso- phers ; but had any one of them been a soothsayer, the adoration for the Thaumaturgist would have succeeded to the esteem for the sage.
* Cadet of Metz. Histoire Naturelle de la Corse, note aa. pp. 138—147.
f Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. n. cap. lxxviii. Cicer. De Divinat. lib. i. cap. l.— Anaximander was a Milesian, a disciple of Thaïes, and a consummate mathematician for the period in which he lived. —Ed.
METEOROLOGY A SOURCE OF PREDICTION. 159