Vlll NOTES. 



latitude from that which belongs to difference of elevation. " Even in southern 

 regions," says the geographer of Amasia, " every high ground, even if it is a 

 plain, is cold." (ii. p. 73.) Eratosthenes and Polybius adduce in favour of a 

 very moderate temperature at the equator, not only the more rapid passage of 

 the sun (Geminus, Elem. Astron. c. 13 ; Cleom. Cycl. Theor. i. 6), but also, 

 and more especially, the swelling or elevation of the ground. (See my Examen 

 crit. de la Ge'ogr. t. iii. p. 150 152.) Both those writers, according to the 

 testimony of Strabo (ii. p. 97), assert, that " the part of the Earth which is 

 near the equator is the highest, and that for this reason it is also very rainy, 

 because the winds, which change with the seasons, bring from the north a 

 great amount of clouds, which hang upon the high land." Of these two beliefs 

 of two great elevations of the ground, one in Northern Asia (the Scythian 

 Europe of Herodotus), and the other in the equatorial zone, the first has main- 

 tained itself, with that pertinacity which belongs to error, for almost two thou- 

 sand years, and has led to the geological fable of an uninterrupted high land of 

 Tartary north of the Himalaya ; while the second could only be supported for 

 an extra tropical part of Asia, for the "high" or " mountain "-plain of Meru, 

 or Mount Meru, celebrated in the oldest and noblest monuments of Indian 

 poetry. (See Wilson's Diet. Sanscrit and English, 1832, p. 674, where Meru 

 is interpreted " high plain.") I have thought it necessary to enter into these 

 details, in order to refute the hypothesis of the ingenious Fre'ret, who, without 

 quoting passages from Greek authors, and only alluding to a single one re- 

 lating to tropical rains, interprets the belief in local elevations of the ground, as 

 having reference either to a flattening of the Earth at the poles, or to the con- 

 verse. " Pour expliquer les pluyes," said Fre'ret (Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscrip- 

 tions, t. xviii. 1753, p. 112), "dans les re'gions e'quinoxiales que les conquetes 

 d'Alexandre firent connoitre, on imagina des courans qui poussoient les nuages 

 des poles vers 1'e'quateur, ou, au de'faut des montagnes qui les arretoient, les 

 nuages 1'etoient par la hauteur ge'ne'rale de la Terre, dont la surface sons 1'e'qua- 

 teur se trouvoit plus e'loignee du centre que sous les poles. Quelques physicians 

 donnerent au globe la figure d'un sphe'roide renfle' sous 1'e'quateur et aplati vers 

 les poles. Au contraire, dans 1'opinion de ceux des anciens qui croyoient la Terre 

 alonge'e aux poles, le pays voisin des poles se trouvoit plus e'loigne' du centre que 

 sous 1'e'quateur." I cannot find any evidence in antiquity to justify these state- 

 ments. In the third section of the first book of Strabo (Pag. 48, Casaub.), it 

 is said expressly, " The whole Earth, as Eratosthenes has said, is globular, but 

 not as if turned by a turner " (an expression borrowed from Herodotus, iv. 36), 

 " having many irregular deviations from so exact a form, occasioned by water, 

 fire, earthquakes, subterranean gusts of wind (elastic vapours ?), and other such 



