PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 137 



indicating how much of ancient cultivation, even in Euro* 

 pean nations, lias disappeared without leaving traces which 

 we can follow ; and for the sake of shewing that the history 

 of early cosmical views, or of the physical contemplation of 

 which we treat, is necessarily confined within restricted limits. 



Beyond the 48th degree of latitude, north of the sea of 

 Azof and of the Caspian, between the Don, the Volga, and 

 the Jaik, where the latter flows from the southern and auri- 

 ferous portion of the Ural, Europe and Asia melt as it were 

 into each other in wide plains or steppes. Herodotus, and 

 before him Pherecydes of Syros, considered the whole of 

 Northern Scythian Asia (Siberia), as belonging to Sarmatic 

 Europe, ( 19 ) and even as forming a part of Europe itself. 

 Towards the south, Europe and Asia are distinctly separated ; 

 but the far projecting peninsula of Asia Minor, and the 

 varied shores and islands of the J^gean Sea, forming, as it 

 were, a bridge between the two continents, have afforded an 

 easy transit to races, languages, manners, and civilisation. 

 Western Asia has been from the earliest times the great 

 highway of nations migrating from the East, as was the 

 north-west of Hellas for the Illyrian races. The archipelago 

 of the ./Egean, divided under Pho3iiician, Persian, and Greek 

 dominion, formed the intermediate link between the Greek 

 world and the fa/ East. 



When the Phrygian was incorporated with the Lydian 

 and the latter with the Persian empire, the circle of ideas of 

 the Asiatic and European Greeks was enlarged by the 

 contact. The Persian sway was extended by the warlike 

 enterprises of Cambyses and Darius Hystaspes, from Gyrene 

 and the Nile to the fruitful lands on the Euphrates and tho 

 Indus. A Greek, Scylax of Karyanda, was employed to 



