OCR Text |
Show 280 PHYSIOGNOMY O.b' PLANTS. Lybia) may once have stood on the sea-shore, and causes such as these may explain why it is now far inland. This, Strato thought, might account for the celebrity of the Oracle, which would be less surprising if it had been on the sea-shore; whereas its great distance from the coast made its present renown inexplicable. Egypt, too, had been formerly overflowed by the sea as far as .the marshes of Pelusium, Mount Casius, and Lake Serbonis; for, on digging beneath the surface, beds of sea-sand and shells are found; showing that the country was formerly overflowed, and the whole district round Mount Casius and Gerrha was a marshy sea which joined the gulf 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 Mceris 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 Mceris "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. pp. 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), was drawn in to form part of an imaginary scheme of igneous eruptions and earthquakes. (See my Examen crit. de l'hist. de la Geographic, vol. i. p. 179; t. iii. p. 136.) I have recently touched more in detail on this subject (Cosmos, bd. ii. s. 153; Engl. ed. pp. 118-119) in a passage which I permit myself to subjoin:- "A more richly varied and broken outline gives to the northern shore of the Mediterranean an advantage over the southern or Ly- |