GREEK SCIENCE IN EARLY ATTIC PERIOD 



the assumption gratuitous though in a sense it be- 

 that the author of the theory of the moon's phases had 

 not failed to ask himself what must be the form of that 

 terrestrial body which could cast the tenuous shadow 

 of the Milky Way. Moreover, we must recall that the 

 habitable earth, as known to the Greeks of that day, 

 was a relatively narrow band of territory, stretching 

 far to the east and to the west. 



Anaxagoras as Meteorologist 



The man who had studied the meteorite of ^)gos- 

 potami, and been put by it on the track of such re- 

 markable inductions, was, naturally, not oblivious to 

 the other phenomena of the atmosphere. Indeed, such 

 a mind as that of Anaxagoras was sure to investi- 

 gate all manner of natural phenomena, and almost 

 equally sure to throw new light on any subject that it 

 investigated. Hence it is not surprising to find Anax- 

 agoras credited with explaining the winds as due to the 

 rarefactions of the atmosphere produced by the sun. 

 This explanation gives Anaxagoras full right to be 

 called "the father of meteorology," a title which, it 

 may be, no one has thought of applying to him, chiefly 

 because the science of meteorology did not make its 

 real beginnings until some twenty-four hundred years 

 after the death of its first great votary. Not content 

 with explaining the winds, this prototype of Franklin 

 turned his attention even to the upper atmosphere. 

 " Thunder," he is reputed to have said, " was produced 

 by the collision of the clouds, and lightning by the rub- 

 bing together of the clouds." We dare not go so far 

 as to suggest that this implies an association in the 



