in Fabulous History, the daughter of Nereus and Doris, and the companion of Diana, who changed her into a fountain to deliver her from the pursuit of her lover Alpheus.

a celebrated fountain near the city of Syracuse in Sicily, famous for the quantity of its waters, and the number of fishes it contained. Many fables were invented by the ancients concerning this fountain. They had also a notion that the river ALPHEUS ran under or through the waters of the sea, without mixing with them, from Peloponnesus to Sicily. Mr Brydone informs us, that it still continues to send forth an immense quantity of water, rising at once to the size of a river, but is entirely abandoned by the fishes it formerly contained in such plenty. At some distance from Arethusa is a fountain of fresh water, which boils up very strongly in the sea, inasmuch that, after piercing the salt water, it may be sometimes taken up very little affected by it. This fountain Mr Brydone thinks the ancients were ignorant of, or they would not have failed to use it as an argument for the submarine journey of the Alpheus.

Mr Swinburne describes this once famous fountain as a large pool of water near the quay, defended from the sea by a wall, and almost hidden by housetops on every other side. The water is not salt, but brackish, and fit for no purpose but washing linen. "This (says he) is the celebrated fountain of Arethusa, whose soft poetical name is known to every reader. The fable of the nymph and her constant lover Alpheus, the excellency of the spring, and the charms of its situation, are themes on which ancient and modern poets have indulged their fancy, and exercised their pens. Alas, how altered! rubbish chokes up its wholesome sources; the waves have found a passage through the rocks, which repeated earthquakes have split; and not a fish is to be seen in it. Sometimes, after an earthquake, it has been left dry; and, at other times, the whole mass of its waters has been tainted by subterraneous effluvia. Its fountain head probably lies among the neighbouring hills."