carefully avoid all chances of being bitten during the months of July and August. Before our goal can be reached it is necessary for us to cross the broad willow-fringed stream of the Sele, the Silarus of antiquity, which according to the testimony of Silius Italicus once possessed the property of petrifying wood. In the distant days of the eighteenth century, the traveller to Paestum had to endure amidst other difficulties and dangers of the road the disagreeable business of being ferried across the Sele, which was then bridgeless. Owing to the malaria and the loneliness of the spot, the acting of ferryman over this river was not an agreeable post, and Count Stolberg, a German dilettante who has left some memories of his Italian wanderings, relates how a feeble dismal soured old man, a veritable Charon of the upper air, had great difficulty in conveying himself, his horse and his servant across the swollen stream. The old man’s age and misery aroused the Count’s compassion, so that he asked him why he continued thus to perform a task at once so arduous and so distasteful. “Sir,” replied the boatman, “I would gladly be excused, but that my master compels me to undertake this work.” “And who, pray, is this tyrant of a master of yours?” indignantly enquired the Count. “Sir, it is my Lord Poverty!” grimly answered the old ferryman, as he pocketed the Teuton’s fee. Times have changed with regard to the necessity of a ferry over the Sele, but to judge from the appearance of the people and from the accounts in the journals, we much doubt if my Lord Poverty’s sway has been much weakened in these parts.