PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL GEOLOGY. 651 



trial and human events. Hence there were to bp 

 brought round by great cycles, not only deluges 

 and conflagrations which were to destroy and reno- 

 vate the earth, but also the series of historical 

 occurrences. Not only the sea and land were to 

 recommence their alternations, but there was to be 

 another Argo, which should carry warriors on the 

 first sea-foray 2 , and another succession of heroic 

 wars. Looking at the passages of ancient authors 

 which refer to terrestrial changes in this view, we 

 shall see that they are addressed almost entirely 

 to the love of the marvellous and the infinite, and 

 cannot with propriety be taken as indications of a 

 spirit of physical philosophy. For example, if we 

 turn to the celebrated passage in Ovid 3 , where 

 Pythagoras is represented as asserting that land 

 becomes sea, and sea land, and many other changes 

 which geologists have verified, we find that these 

 observations are associated with many fables, as 

 being matter of exactly the same kind ; the foun- 

 tain of Ammon which was cold by day and warm 

 by night 4 ; the waters of Salmacis which effemi- 

 nate men ; the Clitorian spring which makes them 

 loathe wine ; the Simplegades islands which were 

 once moveable ; the Tritonian lake which covered 

 men's bodies with feathers; and many similar 

 marvels. And the general purport of the whole is, 

 to countenance the doctrine of the metempsychosis, 



* Virg. Eclog. 4. 8 Met. Lib. xv. 4 V. 309, &c. 



