French National Institute. 185 
testimonies of this antient extent of the Caspian Sea and of 
its communications with the Euxine and with the Aral, and 
has collected them into an elaborate memoir, which he has 
presented to this class and to that of history and antient 
literature. 
The antients attributed the separation of the two former, : 
and the great diminution of the Euxine itself, to the rup- 
ture of the Bosphorus, which they supposed had caused the 
deluge of Deucalion; the Euxine being thrown with 
violence by this aperture over the Archipelago and Greece. 
Some of them even thought that at this era the Mediterra- 
nean, ‘suddenly augmented by the same cause, had broken 
through the Pillars of Hercules, and formed the streights 
which unite it to the great ocean. 
But M. Olivier thinks that if the Euxine had ever been 
higher than at present, it would have naturally found an 
outlet by the plain of Nicea, and the other valleys which 
lead to the Propontis and the Archipelago; that, at all 
events, the strait channel of the Bosphorus could not have 
furnished enough of water to inundate the high mountains 
of Greece, which are more elevated than any on the shores 
of the Euxine, and tar less could it have produced a sensi- 
ble effect upon the immense expanse of the Mediterranean. 
He is of opinion, therefore, that the stories of the an- 
tients in this respect, have their foundation neither in ob- 
servation nor in tradition, but merely in conjectures which 
the physical situation of the places entirely reverses. 
It is not less true that the part of the Bosphorus nearest 
the Euxine sea presents traces of volcanic revolutions, but 
the rest of its extent is a natural valley: it is the same with 
the Hellespont. 
Some other researches tend also to show the utility of the 
alliance between the sciences and erudition. 
M. Monges, upon the occasion of two mill-stones being 
dug up near Abbeville, collected together all the passages in 
the antients relative tothe stones of which they made their 
mill-stones. It results, that they were almost always made 
ef porous basaltic stones; those dug up at Abbeville being 
} made 
