ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 281 



bian shore, which according to Strabo was remarked by Eratosthenes. 

 The three great peninsulas, the Iberian, the Italian, and the Helle- 

 nic, with their sinuous and deeply indented shores, form, in combi- 

 nation 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 

 lines, as if over long fissures, early led to geognostical views, respect- 

 ing eruptions, terrestrial revolutions, and overpourings of the swollen 

 higher seas into those which were lower. The Euxine, the Darda- 

 nelles, the Straits of Grades, 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 break- 

 ing up of the ancient Lyktonia into several islands, when ' the dark- 

 haired 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 circum- 

 stances, proceeded from the Alexandrian school, where erudition 

 abounded, and a strong predilection was felt for antique legends. It 

 is not necessary 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 Miiller considers, i 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 phenome- 

 non 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, 



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