INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 189 



m the same temperate zone, near the parallel of Thinse or 

 Athens, which passes through the Atlantic Ocean, besides the 

 world we inhabit, there may be one or more other worlds peo- 

 pled by beings different from ourselves." It is astonishing 

 that this expression did not attract the attention of Spanish 

 writers, who, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, be- 

 lieved that they every where, in classical authors, found the 

 traces of a knowledge of the New World. 



" Since," as Strabo well observes, " in all works of art 

 which are designed to represent something great, the object 

 aimed at is not the completeness of the individual parts," his 

 chief desire, in his gigantic work, is pre-eminently to direct 

 attention to the form of the whole. This tendency toward a 

 generalization of ideas did not prevent him, at the same time, 

 from prosecuting researches wliich led to the establishment of 

 a large number of admirable physical results, referring more 

 especially to geognosy.* He entered, hke Posidonius and Po- 

 lybius, into the consideration of the influence of the longer or 

 shorter interval that occurred between each passage of the sun 

 across the zenith ; of the maximum of atmospheric heat un- 

 der the tropics and the equator ; of the various causes which 

 give rise to the changes experienced by the earth's surface ; 



ing to the " belief of the Indian philosophers and Brahmins." Com- 

 pare Cosmas, in Montfaucou, Collect, nova Patrum., t. ii., p. 137 ; and 

 my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. xxiii., 120-129, and 194-203; t. ii., p. 413. 

 Cosmas and the Pseudo-Arrian, Aga theme ros, according to the learned 

 investigations of Professdr Franz, decidedly ascribe to the metropolis 

 of the Sines a high northern latitude (nearly in the parallel of Rhodes ■ 

 and Athens) ; while Ptolemy, misled by the accounts of mariners, has 

 no knowledge except of a Thinae three degrees south of the equator 

 (Gcogr., i., 17). I conjecture that Thinas merely meant, generally, a 

 Chinese emporium, a harbor in the land of Tsin, and that, therefore, 

 one Thinae (Tzinitza) may have been designated north of the equator, 

 and another south of the equator. 



* Strabo, lib. i., p. 49-60 ; lib. ii., p. 95 and 97 ; lib. vi., p. 277 ; lib. 

 xvii., p. 830. On the elevation of islands and of continents, see partic- 

 ularly lib. i., p. 51, 54, and 59. The old Eleat Xenophanes was led to 

 conclude, from the numerous fossil marine productions found at a dis- 

 tance from the sea, that " the present dry ground had been raised from 

 the bottom of the sea" (Origen, Philosophumena, cap. 4). Apuleius 

 collected fossils at the time of the Antonines from the Gaetulian (Mauri- 

 tanian) Mountains, and attributed them to the Deucalion flood, to which 

 he ascribed the same character of universality as the Hebrews to the 

 Deluge of Noah, and the Mexican Azteks to that of the Coxcox. Pro- 

 fessor Franz, by means of very careful investigation, has refuted the 

 belief entertained by Beckmann and Cuvier, that Apuleius possessed a 

 collection of specimens of natural history. (See Beckmann's History 

 9f Inventions, Bohn's Standard Library (1846), vol. i., p. 285 ; and Hist, 

 des Sciences Nat., t. i- p. 350 ; 



