When reading Pliny and Strabo on Illyricum, we see that their knowledge as to its boundaries is as uncertain as our own. Appian, who undertook, I know not on what authority, to give a national genealogy of the Illyrians, got so confounded either through his own fault, or the fault of his authority, that he jumbled together Illyrians, Gauls, Paeonians, and Thracians in a most absurd manner. I think it my duty to tell you, that he is no authority at all. In regard to some nations we are in the greatest difficulty, and are unable to assert anything with certainty. The Dardanians were probably Illyrians; but the Scordiscans were undoubtedly Gauls. The Liburnians were certainly different from the Illyrians; but I shall say more of them when I have done with the Illyrians. In speaking of the Macedonian mountains, I have already directed your attention to the connexion of that whole range of mountains with the Alps. The Illyrian range of mountains, which traverses Dalmatia and branches off in Carniola from the Julian Alps, and then, at a considerable distance from the sea, stretches towards Venetia, approaches the sea beyond Aquileia, in the neighbourhood of Trieste, and forms Istria; it passes through Istria as a mighty and lofty mountain, though it does not reach the snow line, then traversing Dalmatia, which it separates from Bosnia, it extends into Albania. It is altogether a limestone mountain, and like all mountains of this kind, it is very much broken up; hence the numbers of promontories and islands off the coast of Dalmatia. This mountain is all full of petrifactions and extremely interesting in a geological and geognostic point of view; it is also well suited for cultivation, and very fertile, but uninhabited, and accordingly for the most part covered with wood to its very tops. It runs from west to east, with a small range towards the south-east, then in a somewhat more southern direction into Macedonia, and is separated from the sea by the hilly country of Albania. Dalmatia is not at all volcanic, whereas in Southern Illyricum or Albania we have a continuation of the volcanic nature of Epirus, whence in the neighbourhood of Apollonia on the Aous we find hot springs of asphalt. I take this opportunity of recalling to your mind the passage of Strabo, which contains the words πηγαὶ χλιαροῦ ἀσφάλτου: the MSS. have καὶ ἀσφάλτου, but the καὶ has been thrown out by editors. I believe that by some mistake ὕδατος is omitted, and that we must read: πηγαὶ χλιαροῦ ὕδατος καὶ ἀσφάλτου. Innumerable emendations have yet to be made in Strabo, and it is to be regretted, that his work has not yet found an editor possessing a thorough knowledge of the Greek language, for Casaubonus edited it with too much haste. In the above passage no one has remembered the fact that ἄσφαλτος is feminine, and that accordingly Strabo could not have said χλιαροῦ ἀσφάλτου.