The difficulty lies in the two words at the end of the first and last lines of the extract, cortus being manifestly corrupt, and pontus inappropriate. In 276 it is fairly clear that ‘the wind’ should be the subject of the sentence, and Markland's uentus is now printed by most editors: in 271, in spite of a variety of conjectures, editors are mostly agreed that ‘the sea’ should be the object, and Marullus' pontum is usually accepted. The sense is thus rectified, but there remains a serious palaeographical difficulty, neither of the corruptions pontum > cortus, uentus > pontus being very probable in itself or paralleled in the Lucretian MSS. It has been suggested, both by Professor Reid (Harvard Studies in Class. Phil. XXII., 1911) and by Professor Merrill (1907), that the last words of the two lines have been interchanged. If this theory can be accepted, it at once gives us pontum in 271: the nominative pontus is only an attempt to adjust it to its new context in 276. We should then be left with cortus at the end of 276, and I suggest that the obvious correction is then corus.