4 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



geological phenomena, such as the possible transposition of 

 continents and ocean basins, culminating in the vain " search 

 for Atlantis with the microscope " in the modern investiga- 

 tion of oceanic deposits. 



Aristotle, also about the time of Pytheas, took all know- 

 ledge for his province, and may be regarded as contributing 

 to oceanography mainly from the points of view of the 

 marine naturalist and the philosophic geographer. His 

 death, if there is any truth in the legend that he threw himself 

 into the whirlpool in despair at being unable to understand 

 the currents in the Strait of Euripus, is unworthy alike of 

 a philosopher and an oceanographer. 



Although the Romans had extended their empire over 

 most of the known world, they made no noteworthy con- 

 tributions to scientific discovery. But in their time the Greek 

 geographer Strabo, in the first century b.c, wrote a compre- 

 hensive work on the physiography of land and sea ; and 

 Posidonius asserts that he measured the sea in the neighbour- 

 hood of Sardinia to a depth of 1,000 fathoms. It would 

 be interesting to know how he did it. There is no further 

 record of deep-sea sounding till we come to the time of 

 Magellan, fifteen centuries later. 



I may just refer in passing to their contemporary, Pliny, 

 whose work (the Historia Naturalis) is little more than a 

 compilation, and not entirely free from errors. He records 

 in all 176 marine animals (four less than Aristotle recorded 

 from the i^gean alone), and yet is so pleased with his cata- 

 logue that he writes : " By Hercules, in the sea and in the 

 ocean, vast as it is, there exists nothing that is unknown 

 to us, and, a truly marvellous fact, it is with those things 

 that nature has concealed in the deep that we are best 

 acquainted ! " I only wish that we moderns, after nearly 

 two thousand years of further investigation, were able to 

 say as much. The more we find out about the sea, the more 

 new problems open up before us for investigation. 



The third stage in early knowledge may be represented 



