Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/89

 *[Footnote: of the Red Sea. When our Sea (the Mediterranean) retreated, the land was uncovered; still, however, leaving the Lake of Serbonis: subsequently this lake also broke through its bounds and the water flowed off, so that the lake became a swamp. The banks of Lake Mœris are also more like sea than river banks." An erroneously corrected reading introduced by Grosskurd on account of a passage in Strabo, Lib. xvii. p. 809, Cas., gives instead of Mœris "the Lake Halmyris:" but this latter lake was situated not far from the mouth of the Danube.

The sluice-theory of Strato led Eratosthenes of Cyrene (the most celebrated of the series of librarians of Alexandria, but less happy than Archimedes in writing on floating bodies), to examine the problem of the equality of level of all external seas, i. e., seas surrounding the Continents. (Strabo, Lib. i. p. 51-56; Lib. ii. p. 104, Casaub). The varied outlines of the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and the articulated form of the peninsulas and islands, had given occasion to the geognostical myth of the ancient land of Lyctonia. The supposed mode of origin of the smaller Syrtis and of the Triton Lake (Diod. iii. 53-55) as well as that of the whole Western Atlas (Maximus Tyrius, viii. 7) were drawn in to form part of an imaginary scheme of igneous eruptions and earthquakes. (See my Examen crit. de l'hist. de la Géographie, Vol. i. p. 179; T. iii. p. 136.) I have recently touched more in detail on this subject (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 153; Engl. ed. p. 118-119) in a passage which I permit myself to subjoin:—

"A more richly varied and broken outline gives to the]*