On the other hand, how difficult it must have been with the limited scientific knowledge of that time to distinguish true from false marvelous properties may be inferred from Plutarch’s description[967] of a certain soft and pliable stone that used to be produced at Carystus and from which handkerchiefs and hair-nets were made which could not be burnt and were cleaned by exposure to fire,—a description, it would seem, of our asbestos, although Plutarch does not give the stone any name. Strabo also ascribes similar properties to a stone from Carystus without naming it.[968] Dioscorides and other Greek authors, we are told,[969] apply the word “asbestos” to quick-lime, but Pliny in the _Natural History_[970] describes what he says the Greeks call ἀσβέστινον much as Plutarch does. He adds that it is employed in making shrouds for royal funerals to separate the ashes of the corpse from those of the pyre.[971] But he seems to regard it as a plant, not a stone, listing it as a variety of linen in one of his books on vegetation. He also states incorrectly that it is found but rarely and in desert and arid regions of India where there is no rain and a hot sun and amid terrible serpents[972]. Probably Pliny or his source argued that anything which resisted the action of fire must have been inured by growth under fiery suns and among serpents. Furthermore it obviously should possess other marvelous properties, so we are not surprised to find Anaxilaus cited to the effect that if this “linen” is tied around a tree trunk, the blows with which the tree is felled cannot be heard. It was thus that imaginations inured to magic enlarged upon unusual natural properties. [Sidenote: _On rivers and mountains._] A treatise upon rivers and mountains in which the marvelous virtues of herbs and stones figure very prominently has sometimes been included among the works of Plutarch, but also has been omitted entirely from some editions.[973] Some have ascribed it to Parthenius of the time of Nero. It is made up of some thirty-five chapters in each of which a river and a mountain are mentioned. Usually some myth or tragic history is recounted, from which the river took its name or with which it was otherwise intimately connected. A similar procedure is followed in the case of the mountain. The writer, whoever he may be, makes a show of extensive reading, citing over forty authorities, most of whom are Greek and not mentioned in the full bibliographies of Pliny’s _Natural History_. The titles cited have to do largely with stones, rivers, and different countries. It has been questioned, however, whether these citations are not bogus.[974] [Sidenote: Magic herbs.]