The fourteenth and fifteenth books of the "De Proprietatibus" are treatises on the geography of the time. Very few words of the editor's are needed to introduce them to modern readers. They may be divided into two classes: one, interesting because of the legends they preserve for us, the other, as reflecting the social life of the time. The first class is represented here by the accounts of the Amazons, of India, of Ireland, and of Finland. Here we have the outlines of the stories-- "Of antres vast, and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders"-- told by Othello to Desdemona. In the other we class such accounts as those of France and of Paris, of the Frisians, Flanders, Scotland, and Iceland. Such countries as these were well known in the thirteenth century, and the feelings of our author about them can be gathered easily enough. The tone of the chapters about England and Scotland would be enough alone to prove that Bartholomew was an Englishman, it there were no other reason to think it. THERE is a lake that hight lake Asphaltus, and is also called the Dead Sea for its greatness and deepness: for it breedeth, ne receiveth, no thing that hath life. Therefore it hath nother fish ne fowls, but whensoever thou wouldst have drowned therein anything that hath life with any craft or gin, then anon it plungeth and cometh again up; though it be strongly thrust downward, it is anon smitten upward. And it moveth not with the wind, for glue withstandeth wind and storms, by which glue all [the] water is stint. And therein may no ship row nor sail, for all thing that hath no life sinketh down to the ground; nor he sustaineth no kind, but it be glued. And a lantern without its light sinketh therein, as it telleth, and a lantern with light floateth above. As the Master of Histories saith, this lake casteth up black clots of glue. In the brim thereof trees grow, the apples whereof are green till they are ripe: and if ye cut them when they are ripe, ye shall find ashes within them. And so it is said in the gloss; and there grow most fair apples, that make men that see them have liking to eat of them, and if one take them, they fade and fall in ashes and smoke, as though they were burning. Olympus is a mount of Macedon, and is full high, so that it is said, that the clouds are thereunder, as Virgil saith. This mount departeth Macedonia and Thracia, and is so high, that it passeth all storms and other passions of the air. And therefore philosophers went up to see the course and places of stars, and they might not live there, but if they had sponges with water to make the air more thick by throwing and sprinkling of water: as the Master of Histories saith.