652 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



and the Pythagorean injunction of not eating 

 animal food. It is clear, I think, that facts so intro- 

 duced must be considered as having been contem- 

 plated rather in the spirit of poetry than of science. 



We must estimate in the same manner, the very 

 remarkable passage brought to light by M. Elie de 

 Beaumont 5 , from the Arabian writer, Kazwiri ; in 

 which we have a representation of the same spot 

 of ground, as being, at successive intervals of five 

 hundred years, a city, a sea, a desert, and again a 

 city. This invention is adduced, I conceive, rather 

 to feed the appetite of wonder, than to fix it upon 

 any reality : as the title of his book, The Marvels 

 of Nature, obviously intimates. 



The speculations of Aristotle, concerning the 

 exchanges of land and sea which take place in long 

 periods, are not formed in exactly the same spirit, 

 but they are hardly more substantial ; and seem to 

 be quite as arbitrary, since they are not confirmed 

 by any examples and proofs. After stating 6 that 

 the same spots of the earth are not always land and 

 always water, he gives the reason. " The principle 

 and cause of this is," he says, " that the inner parts 

 of the earth, like the bodies of plants and animals, 

 have their ages of vigour and of decline; but in 

 plants and animals all the parts are in vigour, and 

 all grow old, at once : in the earth different parts 

 arrive at maturity at different times by the operation 



6 Ann. dcs Sc. Nat. xxv. 380. e Meteorol i. 14. 



