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Show A NOTATIO S AND ADDITIONS. 281 bian shore, which according to Strabo was remarked by Eratosthenes. The three great peninsulas, the Iberian, the Italian, and the Hellenic, with their sinuous and deeply indented shores, form, in combination with the neighboring islands and opposite coasts, many straits and isthmuses. The configuration of the continent and the islands, the latter either severed from the main or volcanically elevated in line , as if over long fissures, early led to geognostical views, respecting eruptions, terrestrial revolutions, and overpourings of the swollen higher seas into those which were lower. The Euxine, the Dardanelles, the Straits of Gades, and the Mediterranean with its many islands, were well fitted to give rise to the view of such a system of sluices. The Orphic Argonaut, who probably wrote in Christian times, wove antique legends into his song; he describes the breaking up of the ancient Lyktonia into several islands, when 'the darkhaired Poseidon, being wroth with Father Kronion, smote Lyktonia with the golden trident.' Similar phantasies, which indeed may often have arisen from imperfect knowledge of geographical circumstances, proceeded from the Alexandrian school, where erudition abounded, and a strong predilection was felt for antique legends. It i not nece sary to determine here whether the myth of the Atlantis broken into fragments should be regarded as a distant and western reflex of that of Lyktonia (as I think I have elsewhere shown to be probable), or whether, as Otfried Muller considers, 'the destruction of Lyktonia (Leuconia) refers to the Samothracian tradition of a great flood which had changed the form of that district.' " (9) p. 233.-" Prevents precipitation taking place from clouds." The vertically-ascending current of the atmosphere is a principal cause of many most important meteorological phenomena. When a desert or a sandy plain, partly or entirely destitute of plants, is bounded by a chain of high mountains, we see the sea breeze drive the dense clouds over the desert without any precipitation taking place before they have reached the mountain-ridge. This phenomenon was formerly explained in a very inappropriate manner by a supposed superior attraction exercised by the mountains on the clouds. The true reason of the phenomenon-appears to consist in the ascending column of warm air which rises from the sandy plain, 24* |