by Leonardo da Vinci
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A method for drying the marsh of Piombino. [Footnote: There is a slight sketch with this text in the original.?Piombino is also mentioned in Nos. 609, l. 55-58 (compare Pl. XXXV, 3, below). Also in No. 1035.]
1067.
The shepherds in the Romagna at the foot of the Apennines make peculiar large cavities in the mountains in the form of a horn, and on one side they fasten a horn. This little horn becomes one and the same with the said cavity and thus they produce by blowing into it a very loud noise. [Footnote: As to the Romagna see also No. 1046.]
1068.
A spring may be seen to rise in Sicily which at certain times of the year throws out chesnut leaves in quantities; but in Sicily chesnuts do not grow, hence it is evident that that spring must issue from some abyss in Italy and then flow beneath the sea to break forth in Sicily. [Footnote: The chesnut tree is very common in Sicily. In writing cicilia Leonardo meant perhaps Cilicia.]
1069.
a. Austria, a. Picardy. b. Saxony. b. Normandy. c. Nuremberg. c. Dauphine. d. Flanders.
a. Biscay. b. Castille. c. Galicia. d. Portugal. e. Taragona. f. Granada.
[Footnote: Two slightly sketched maps, one of Europe the other of
Spain, are at the side of these notes.]
1070.
Perpignan. Roanne. Lyons. Paris. Ghent. Bruges. Holland.
[Footnote: Roana does not seem to mean here Rouen in Normandy, but is probably Roanne (Rodumna) on the upper Loire, Lyonnais (Dep. du Loire). This town is now unimportant, but in Leonardo's time was still a place of some consequence.]
1071.
At Bordeaux in Gascony the sea rises about 40 braccia before its ebb, and the river there is filled with salt water for more than a hundred and fifty miles; and the vessels which are repaired there rest high and dry on a high hill above the sea at low tide. [Footnote 2: This is obviously an exaggeration founded on inaccurate information. Half of 150 miles would be nearer the mark.]
1072.
The Rhone issues from the lake of Geneva and flows first to the West and then to the South, with a course of 400 miles and pours its waters into the Mediterranean.
1073.
c d is the garden at Blois; a b is the conduit of Blois, made in France by Fra Giocondo, b c is what is wanting in the height of that conduit, c d is the height of the garden at Blois, e f is the siphon of the conduit, b c, e f, f g is where the siphon discharges into the river. [Footnote: The tenor of this note (see lines 2 and 3) seems to me to indicate that this passage was not written in France, but was written from oral information. We have no evidence as to when this note may have been written beyond the circumstance that Fra Giocondo the Veronese Architect left France not before the year 1505. The greater part of the magnificent Chateau of Blois has now disappeared. Whether this note was made for a special purpose is uncertain. The original form and extent of the Chateau is shown in Androvet, Les plus excellents Bastiments de France, Paris MDCVII, and it may be observed that there is in the middle of the garden a Pavilion somewhat similar to that shown on Pl. LXXXVIII No. 7.
See S. DE LA SAUSSAYE, Histoire du Chateau de Blois 4eme edition Blois et Paris p. 175: En mariant sa fille ainee a Francois, comte d'Angouleme, Louis XII lui avait constitue en dot les comtes de Blois, d'Asti, de Coucy, de Montfort, d'Etampes et de Vertus. Une ordonnance de Francois I. lui laissa en 1516 _l'administration du comte de Blois.
