They agree also in saying that the cities placed upon mounds become islands, as in Egypt and Ethiopia, and that the inundation ceases after the rising of Arcturus, when the waters recede. They add, that the ground when half dried is sowed, after having been prepared by the commonest labourer, yet the plant comes to perfection, and the produce is good. The rice, according to Aristobulus, stands in water in an enclosure. It is sowed in beds. The plant is four cubits in height, with many ears, and yields a large produce. The harvest is about the time of the setting of the Pleiades, and the grain is beaten out like barley. It grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susis, and in the Lower Syria. Megillus says that it is sowed before the rains, but does not require irrigation or transplantation, being supplied with water from tanks. The bosmorum, according to Onesicritus, is a kind of corn smaller than wheat, and grows in places situated between [CAS. 692] rivers. After it is threshed out, it is roasted; the threshers being previously bound by an oath not to carry it away unroasted from the threshing floor; a precaution to prevent the exportation of the seed. 19. Aristobulus, when comparing the circumstances in which this country resembles, and those in which it differs from, Egypt and Ethiopia, and observing that the swelling of the Nile is occasioned by rains in the south, and of the Indian rivers by rains from the north, inquires why the intermediate places have no rain; for it does not rain in the Thebaïs as far as Syene, nor at the places near Meroë, nor in the parts of India from Patalene to the Hydaspes. But the country situated above these parts,[345] in which both rain and snow occur, is cultivated by the husbandman in the same manner as the country without India; for the rain and the snow supply the ground with moisture. It is probable from what he relates that the country is subject to shocks of earthquakes, that the ground is loose and hollow by excess of moisture, and easily splits into fissures, whence even the course of rivers is altered. He says that when he was despatched upon some business into the country, he saw a tract of land deserted, which contained more than a thousand cities with their dependent villages; the Indus, having left its proper channel, was diverted into another, on the left hand, much deeper, and precipitated itself into it like a cataract, so that it no longer watered the country by the (usual) inundation on the right hand, from which it had receded, and this was elevated above the level, not only of the new channel of the river, but above that of the (new) inundation. 20. The account of Onesicritus confirms the facts of the rising of the rivers and of the absence of land breezes. He says that the sea-shore is swampy, particularly near the mouths of rivers, on account of the mud, tides, and the force of the winds blowing from the sea.