Pliny on how pearls are formed (Naturalis Historia, 9.54):
Has ubi genitalis anni stimularit hora, pandentes se quadam oscitatione impleri roscido conceptu tradunt, gravidas postea eniti, partumque concharum esse margaritas pro qualitate roris accepti.
When the birthing season of the year stimulates these creatures, it is said that they, opening themselves wide with a kind of yawn, are filled with a dewy material to conceive; afterwards, the impregnated shells give birth, and the offspring of the shells are pearls based on what kind of dew is received.
The idea may have seemed ludicrous enough even in Pliny’s time to merit the tradunt “they say,” though he does not appear to have had any better hypotheses to offer than that of a world where pearls are given birth to by oysters inebriate of air and debauchee of dew.
This is the second time I have Pliny using qualitas with pro and a following genitive, and in both cases the sense is pretty much like ‘depending on what kind of’.
[For qualitas.]
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