the nymph Similax, and her lover Crocus, turned into flowers--prefers the history of the fountain Salmacis, who conceived a violent attachment for Hermaphroditus, the son of Mercury and Venus. These sisters, having discontinued their narrating, remained still obstinate in their contempt of Bacchus, who, in revenge, changed their implements into vines and ivy, and themselves into bats. Cadmus, a son of Agenor, king of Phœnicia, and Telephassa or Agriope, was ordered by his father to go in search of his sister Europa, whom Jupiter had carried away, and not to return unless he found her. His search being unsuccessful, he is said to have consulted the oracle of Apollo, by which he was commanded to build a city where he saw a heifer standing on the grass, and call the country Bœotia. Having found the heifer, he sent his men to a fountain for water, which was at no great distance, that he might offer a sacrifice in gratitude to the god. But the spring being sacred to Mars, a dragon guarded it, which devoured all his men. By the art of Minerva, he overcame the dragon, and sowed its teeth, which grew up armed men, who, on his throwing a stone amongst them, began to fight, and all were killed except five, who assisted him in building Thebes. Hence Pentheus, in addressing the Thebans, calls them Anguigenæ, serpent or snake-descended. The ferocity of the petty tribes who inhabit that part of Greece, and Cadmus's plan of subduing the natives by artfully exciting them to fight against each other until the strength and resources of the contending parties were quite exhausted, satisfactorily explain the tale of the dragon, the armed men that sprang from his teeth, and the stone which he threw among them. He afterwards married Harmonia or Harmonie, the daughter of Mars and Venus, by whom he had one son and four daughters. In advanced life, oppressed with sorrow at the fate of his daughter Ino and her two sons, he fled from Thebes to Illyricum, where he was changed into a dragon. Halcyone's husband, Ceyx, a king of Trachinia, was drowned while attempting to cross to Claros to consult the Oracle. Disconsolate in consequence of his departure, she incessantly implored the gods for his safe return. Juno, moved by her constant prayers for her husband after his death, and compassionating the violence of her sorrow, entreated Somnus to send Morpheus, who, assuming the form and voice of Ceyx, appeared in a dream, and informed her of his fate. Frantic with grief, she ran to the beach, and, according to her dream, found the body of Ceyx floating lifeless to the shore. The queen of Trachinia was changed into a bird, in her attempt to reach by a bound the body of her husband, which she no sooner touched than it underwent the same transformation. Their mutual attachments remaining, they continue to live together as birds, distinguished by the same tenderness and affection which had marked their conjugal state when in the human form.