48 CELESTIAL, ATMOSPHERIC, AND 



of land and sea Aristotle dissents from those philosophers 

 who believed that such changes were due to a continuous 

 diminution of the sea or to changes of the Kosmos. It 

 would be absurd, he says, to move the Kosmos for the sake 

 of what are, after all, only small and temporary changes. 

 They also say, he asserts, that the sea becomes less, in 

 consequence of its being in process of drying up, for more 

 places appear to be dry than there used to be, but if they 

 had extended the range of their observations, they would 

 have found that, in some cases, the sea had encroached on 

 the land.* 



It should be considered, he says, that these relative 

 changes of land and sea take place in some kind of order 

 and according to a kind of cycle, and that, just like plants 

 and animals, the inner parts of the Earth have their prime 

 and decay, with this difference that, while a plant or animal, 

 as a whole, has its prime and old age, the Earth itself has 

 not, but only its parts.! He decided that the relative 

 changes took place through the occurrence, during a very 

 long period, of seasons of excessive rainfall, just as, in 

 Greece, winter with its heavy rains occurred yearly, but 

 these supposed seasons of excessive rainfall did not always 

 happen in the same regions, and might be quite local, just 

 as the deluge of Deucalion took place chiefly about Dodona 

 and the region of the Achelous.t Such periodical increase 

 in the rainfall and, consequently, in the quantity of water 

 flowing into the sea, caused the sea to encroach on the land, 

 while a diminution of rainfall resulted in a retirement of the 

 sea. He does not suggest that the relative changes of land 

 and sea were due to movements of the land, although he 

 gives instances of some of the effects of earthquakes. 



Aristotle proceeds to show, in several eloquent passages, 

 that these changes were part of the ordinary course of 

 Nature. The Kosmos, he says, is indestructible and yet 

 undergoes changes, so that it follows that the same parts of 

 the Earth will not always be land or always covered by seas 

 or rivers. Events prove this, for the whole country of the 

 Egyptians seems to be the work of the Nile, and Lake 

 Maeotis [Sea of Azov] is in process of being silted up.|| &quot; It 

 is evident, therefore, since Time fails not and the Universe 

 is eternal, that neither the river Tanais nor the Nile has 



* Meteorol. i. c. 14, ss. 17-19. f Ibid. i. c. 14, ss. 2 and 3. 



| Ibid. i. c. 14, ss. 20-22. Ibid. i. c. 14, s. 25. 



|| Ibid, i, c. 14, ss. 26 and 29. 



