Professor Ross remarks upon the character of the Greek limestone,—hard and intractable to the mason,—jagged and irregular in its fracture,—as having first determined in early times the polygonal style of architecture, which has been denominated (he observes) Cyclopian and Pelasgic, without the least reason for either denomination (Reise auf den Griech. Inseln, vol. i. p. 15). [328] Griesebach, Reisen durch Rumelien, vol. ii. ch. 13, p. 124. [329] In passing through the valley between Œta and Parnassus, going towards Elateia, Fiedler observes the striking change in the character of the country. “Romelia (_i. e._ Akarnania, Ætolia, Ozolian Lokris, etc.), woody, well-watered, and covered with a good soil, ceases at once and precipitously: while craggy limestone mountains, of a white-grey color, exhibit the cold character of Attica and the Morea.” (Fiedler, Reise, i. p. 213.) The Homeric Hymn to Apollo conceives even the πεδίον πυρήφορον of Thebes as having in its primitive state been covered with wood (v. 227). The best timber used by the ancient Greeks came from Macedonia, the Euxine, and the Propontis: the timber of Mount Parnassus and of Eubœa was reckoned very bad; that of Arcadia better (Theophrast. v. 2, 1; iii. 9). Besides the scarcity of wood for fuel, there is another serious inconvenience to which the low grounds of Greece are exposed,—the want of a supply of water at once adequate and regular.[330] Abundance of rain falls during the autumnal and winter months, little or none during the summer; while the naked limestone of the numerous hills, neither absorbs nor retains moisture, so that the rain runs off as rapidly as it falls, and springs are rare.[331] Most of the rivers of Greece are torrents in early spring, and dry before the end of the summer: the copious combinations of the ancient language, designated the winter torrent by a special and separate word.[332] The most considerable rivers in the country are, the Peneius, which carries off all the waters of Thessaly, finding an exit into the Ægean through the narrow defile which parts Ossa from Olympus,—and the Achelôus, which flows from Pindus in a south-westerly direction, separating Ætolia from Akarnania, and emptying itself into the Ionian sea: the Euênus also takes its rise at a more southerly part of the same mountain chain, and falls into the same sea more to the eastward. The rivers more to the southward are unequal and inferior. Kephisus and Asôpus, in Bœotia, Alpheius, in Elis and Arcadia, Pamisus in Messenia, maintain each a languid stream throughout the summer; while the Inachus near Argos, and the Kephisus and Ilissus near Athens, present a scanty reality which falls short still more of their great poetical celebrity. Of all those rivers which have been noticed, the Achelôus is by far the most important. The quantity of mud which its turbid stream brought down and deposited, occasioned