54 CELESTIAL, ATMOSPHERIC, AND 



the west wind, not only unpleasantly hot but also apparently 

 possessed of the property of rousing insect life to activity. 

 At least, the common house fly drew blood through my thick 

 stockings, and when I complained I was told that it was due 

 to the wind." 



Aristotle makes assertions, some of which were evidently 

 mere guesses, about the depths of various seas. He says 

 that the Pontus is deeper than the Moeotis (now called the 

 Sea of Azov), that the ^gean is deeper than the Pontus, 

 that the Sicilian is deeper than the ^gean, that the Sardonic 

 and Tyrrhenian seas are deeper than any of these, and that 

 the waters beyond the Pillars of Hercules are of small 

 volume because of the mud, and are undisturbed by 

 winds.* 



The Sea of Azov is said to be not deeper than eight 

 fathoms, and has long been known to be very shallow, 

 Aristotle says that it had been silted up to sach an extent 

 that the ships which sailed on it in his time were much 

 smaller than those which sailed on it sixty years before.! 

 The silting-up process still goes on and Aristotle's statement 

 is probably correct. I do not know whether the ^gean is 

 deeper than the Pontus or Black Sea, but Aristotle correctly 

 states that the Sicilian, by which he probably meant the sea 

 between Sicily, Greece, and Crete, is deeper than the ^gean. 

 Eespecting the other seas mentioned by him, his statements 

 are incorrect. Comparatively recent soundings show that, 

 although the average depth of the eastern Mediterranean 

 is only a few fathoms greater than that of the western 

 Mediterranean, yet the maximum recorded sounding in the 

 former is about four hundred fathoms greater than the 

 maximum recorded sounding in the latter. The maximum 

 sounding in the eastern Mediterranean is not less than two 

 thousand four hundred fathoms, to the S.W. of Cape 

 Matapan and therefore in a part of Aristotle's Sicilian Sea. 

 His statement about the waters beyond the Pillars of 

 Hercules is obviously derived from the famous legend of a 

 sunken Atlantis, related by Plato in the Timaeus, and needs 

 no further comment. When arguing that sea water con- 

 tains a large quantity of earthy matters to which the saltness 

 and bitterness of the water are due, Aristotle refers to the 

 Dead Sea, saying that if, according to the tales which some 

 narrate, there is a lake in Palestine of such a kind that a 



* Meteorol. ii. c. 1, ss. 13 and 14. f Ibid. i. c. 14, s. 29. 



