933.

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933.

Of the surface of the water in relation to the globe (933-936).The centres of the sphere of water are two, one universal and common to all water, the other particular. The universal one is that which is common to all waters not in motion, which exist in great quantities. As canals, ditches, ponds, fountains, wells, dead rivers, lakes, stagnant pools and seas, which, although they are at various levels, have each in itself the limits of their superficies equally distant from the centre of the earth, such as lakes placed at the tops of high mountains; as the lake near Pietra Pana and the lake of the Sybil near Norcia; and all the lakes that give rise to great rivers, as the Ticino from Lago Maggiore, the Adda from the lake of Como, the Mincio from the lake of Garda, the Rhine from the lakes of Constance and of Chur, and from the lake of Lucerne, like the Tigris which passes through Asia Minor carrying with it the waters of three lakes, one above the other at different heights of which the highest is Munace, the middle one Pallas, and the lowest Triton; the Nile again flows from three very high lakes in Ethiopia.

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Footnotes

181:496 5: Pietra Pana, a mountain near Florence. If for Norcia, we may read Norchia, the remains of the Etruscan city near Viterbo, there can be no doubt that by 'Lago della Sibilla'--a name not known elsewhere, so far as I can learn--Leonardo meant Lago di Vico (Lacus Ciminus, Aen. 7).