Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/87

 *[Footnote: of nature have been treated of in a special work by Dureau de la Malle, and all the information possessed on the subject has been collected in Carl von Hoff's important work, entitled Geschichte der natürlichen Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche, Th. i. 1822, S. 105-162; and in Creuzer's Symbolik, 2te Aufl. Th. ii. S. 285, 318, and 361. A reflex, as it were, of the traditions of Samothrace appears in the "Sluice theory" of Strato of Lampsacus, according to which the swelling of the waters of the Euxine first opened the passage of the Dardanelles, and afterwards caused the outlet through the pillars of Hercules. Strabo has preserved to us in the first book of his Geography, among critical extracts from the works of Eratosthenes, a remarkable fragment of the lost writings of Strato, presenting views which extend to almost the entire circumference of he Mediterranean.

"Strato of Lampsacus," says Strabo (Lib. i. p. 49 and 50, Casaub.), "is even more disposed than the Lydian Xanthus," (who had described impressions of shells at a distance from the sea) "to expound the causes of the things which we see. He asserts that the Euxine had formerly no outlet at Byzantium, but the sea becoming swollen by the rivers which ran into it, had by its pressure opened the passage through which the waters flow into the Propontis and the Hellespont. He also says that the same thing has happened to our Sea {the Mediterranean);" "for here, too, when the sea had become swollen by the rivers, (which in flowing into it had left dry their marshy banks), it forced for itself a passage through the isthmus of land connecting the]*