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Show A OTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 279 natiirlichen V eranderungen der Erdoberflache, th. i. 1822, s. 105- 162; and in Crem'ler'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 Strata of Lampsacus, according to which the swelling of the waters of the Euxine first opened the pa sage 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 Strata, presenting views which extend to almost the entire circumference of the Mediterranean. "Strata of Lampsacus," says Strabo (lib. i. pp. 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 Pillars. The proofs which Strata gives of this are, first, that there is still a bank under water running from Europe to Libya, showing that the outer and inner seas were formerly divided; and next that the Euxine is the shallowest, the Cretan, Sicilian, and Sardoic Seas being on the contrary very deep; the reason being that the Euxine has been filled with mud by the many and large rivers flowing into it from the north, while the other seas continued deep. The Euxine is also the freshest, and the waters flow towards the parts where the bottom of the sea is lowest. Hence he inferred that the whole of the Euxine would finally be choked with mud if the rivers were to continue to flow into it: and this is already in some degree the case on the west side of the Euxine towards Salmydessus (the Thracian Apollonia), and what are called by mariners the 'Breasts' off the mouth of the Ister and along the shore of the Scythian Desert. Perhaps the Temple of Ammon (in |