ABSTRACT
SOMETIMES, too, when they are impelled by expediency or necessity, the northern people have a rather clever means of making their way through woods at night time, and even by day when in the regions of the more extreme North, before and after the winter solstice, there is perpetual night. Those who need these aids seek out rotten pieces of oak bark and place these at certain intervals on the way they have determined to go, so that the luminosity will enable them to complete their journey. 1 It is not only the bark that furnishes this light, but the trunk, too, if it has rotted, and a fungus called agaric 2 which grows at the very top of this acorn-bearing tree; it has the property of glowing at night, as also do fireflies which take wing about the time of the autumnal equinox, though these, since they soon die when attacked by the cold, are reckoned to be of no benefit. Therefore it is more often rotten oak and agaric that they collect (since these betray their whereabouts by their own light), for use, as I said before, in the woods, or at home; that is to say, so that by its glow, as though by a burning light, they may more safely approach places full of combustible stuff, such as winter barns, crammed with ripe harvested corn and hay, which I shall describe later in a chapter about threshing in winter. 3 People are found, too, endowed with such a sharp vision that they boast of being able to see and handle almost anything without any physical light whatever. Pliny says that many more such men are undoubtedly to be found in Ceylon than anywhere else in the world. 4
Endless nights
Pieces of oak bark for light
Agaric glows by night
Fireflies die of cold
Winter barns
People who can see in the dark
Ceylon
