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[5] It possessed strange kinds of trees which reached a height of seventy cubits, were so thick that they could scarcely be embraced by four men, and cast a shadow of three plethra.1

This country possessed a multitude of snakes, small and variously coloured.2

1 Perhaps three-quarters of an acre. The tree is presumably the banyan. Cp. Strabo 15.1.21, who quotes Onesicritus (Jacoby, op. cit. no. 134, F 22) to the effect that they could scarcely be embraced by five men, and could give shade to four hundred horsemen, but adds that Aristobulus (Jacoby, op. cit. no. 139, F 36) says that they could shade fifty horsemen.

2 Mentioned also by Nearchus (Jacoby, op. cit. no. 133, F 10; Arrian Indica 15.10) and Cleitarchus (Jacoby, op. cit. no. 137, F 18; Aelian De Natura Animalium 18.2).

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