filberts, cereals, wine (the total
production of wine in the province amounted to 28,600,000 gallons in
1905) and oil. The total value of exports in 1905 was L1,647,075, and of
imports L1,326,055, the latter including notably coal, almost entirely
from the United Kingdom, and wheat, from Russian ports. The harbour is a
good one, and has been considerably enlarged since 1872; L128,000 was
voted in 1905 towards the completion of the harbour works by the Italian
government. Sulphide of carbon is produced here; and there are large
dyeworks, and a factory for making bed-stuffing from seaweed.

The ancient Catina was founded in 729 B.C. by colonists from Naxos,
perhaps on the site of an earlier Sicel settlement--the name is entirely
un-Greek, and may be derived from [Greek: katinon], which in the Sicel
language, as _catinum_ in Latin, meant a basin, and would thus be
descriptive of the situation of the town. Charondas, a citizen of
Catina, is famous as its lawgiver, but his date and his birthplace are
alike uncertain; the fragments preserved of his laws show that they
belong to a somewhat primitive period. The poet Stesichorus of Himera
died here. Very little is heard of Catina in history until 476 B.C.,
when Hiero I. removed its inhabitants to Leontini, repeopled it with
5000 Syracusans and 5000 Peloponnesians, and changed its name to Aetna.
In 461 B.C., however, with the help of Ducetius and the Syracusans, the
former inhabitants recovered possession of their city and revived the
old name. Catina was, however, an ally of Athens during the Syracusan
expedition (415-413 B.C.), and served as the Athenian base of operations
in the early part of the war. In 403 B.C. it was taken by Dionysius of
Syracuse, who plundered the city, sold the inhabitants into slavery and
replaced them with Campanian mercenaries. In the First Punic War it was
one of the first cities of Sicily to be taken by the Romans (263 B.C.).
Marcellus constructed a gymnasium here out of the booty of Syracuse. In
123 B.C. there was an eruption of Etna so violent that the tithe on the
territory of Catina payable to Rome was remitted for ten years. It
appears to have been a flourishing city in the ist century B.C., but to
have suffered from the ravages of Sextus Pompeius. It became a Roman
_colonia_ under Augustus, and it is from this period that the fertile
plain, hitherto called the plain of Leontini, begins to be called the
plain of Catina. It seems to have been a