,907.] AND CONTRACTION OF THE EARTH. 241 



the doctrine of the upheaval of the land by earthquakes. Aristotle 

 distinctly states that these calamities are forgotten and lost from 

 memory by the migrations of peoples and the ravages of time, and 

 Plato clearly holds the same view. 

 § 19. The Theory of Aristotle (384-322 B. C). 



The English translation given below is based on the Greek Text 

 employed in the Tauchnitz edition of the works of Aristotle. The 

 " Meteorology " is acknowledged to be a genuine production of the 

 Stageirite, and the chief difficulty in translating it consists in the 

 peculiar terminology and terseness of style used in this probably 

 unfinished work. After the present translation was outlined the 

 Rev. Theodore F. Burnham, M.A., very kindly read it and offered 

 a number of valuable suggestions based on his extensive knowledge 

 of Greek. Professor Edward B. Clapp, head of the Department 

 of Greek in the University of California, also favored the translator 

 with valuable criticisms, and very kindly supplied a copy of the 

 scholarly French Translation by Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, for the 

 purpose of comparison in the final revision. As Aristotle's style 

 is somewhat unique and peculiar to himself, this was felt to be 

 important as a necessary precaution to ensure accuracy, especially 

 where the language of the author is unduly condensed or incomplete, 

 and therefore not easily interpreted. 



Aristotle held that the air is produced from the evaporation of 

 water (" Meteor.," Lib. I., Chap. 3) by the fire inside and outside 

 the earth, and says that the air is a kind of vapor. He recognized 

 that air could be heated by rapid and violent motion, and as arranged 

 his adopted system of the world was made up of a lithosphere, a 

 hydrosphere, an atmosphere, a pyrosphere and then beyond all the 

 sphere of ether ; certain interchanges took place between these divi- 

 sions of the world. ^ Aristotle uses separate words for the various 



^ Among the many other points discussed by Aristotle we may mention 

 the following: 



1. The primitive fluidity of the globe. He holds, with Thales, that both 

 the earth and sea were originally liquid ; that a part was dried up by the sun. 

 Indeed the wise men held that the sea was diminishing in volume by gradual 

 desiccation, but Aristotle does not seem to hold this view. (Lib. II., Cap. i, 

 § 1-4.) 



2. The earth is spherical, not large, fixed in the center of the universe, 

 causes night by its shadow in space, and also eclipses of the moon, the atmo- 

 sphere being confined to this perishable sublunar sphere, as in the Almagest 

 of Ptolemy, who often follows Aristotle. 



