HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 307 



A good example of a Myth of Observation is a story current 

 in Egypt in Strabo's time, but wliich he, having indeed a con- 

 siderable knowledge of geology, declines to believe. "But 

 one of the wondrous things," he says, " which we saw about 

 the pyramids, must not be passed over. There lie in front of 

 the pyramids certain heaps of the masons' rubbish, and among 

 these there are found pieces in shape and size like lentils, and 

 in some, as it were, half-peeled grains. They say, the leavings 

 of the workmen's food have been turned into stone, but this 

 is not likely, for at home among us there is a longish ridge of 

 hill in a plain, and this is full of lentil-like stones of tufa, etc."^ 

 To men whose country has the open sea to its west it seems 

 that the sun plunges at night into its waters. Now the sun 

 is evidently a mass of matter at a distance, and very hot, 

 and when red-hot bodies come in contact with water there 

 follows a hissing noise ; and thus the inference is easy and 

 straightforward, that when the sun dips into the waves such 

 a sound ought to be heard. From the inference that the 

 hissing might be heard, to the assertion that it has actually 

 been heard, is the easy step by which the crude argument of 

 early science passes into the full-grown Myth of Observation. 

 In two distant countries where the world seems to end west- 

 ward in the boundless ocean, the story is to be found. The 

 Sacred Promontory, that is Cape St. Vincent, Strabo says, is 

 the westernmost point, not of Europe alone, but of the whole 

 habitable earth, and there Posidonius tells how the vulgar say 

 the sun goes down larger on the ocean- coast, and with a noise 

 almost as it were the sea hissiug as the sun plunges into its 

 depths and is quenched ; but this is false, as well as that the 

 night follows instantly upon its setting.^ So in the Pacific, 

 in some of the Society Islands, the name for sunset means the 

 falling of the sun into the sea, and the sun itself is thought 

 to be a substance resembling fire. Mr. Ellis asked them how 

 they knew it fell into the sea, and they said they had not 

 seen it, but some people of Borabora or Maupiti, the most 

 western islands, had once heard the hissing occasioned by its 

 plunging into the ocean. ^ 



' Strabo, xvii. 1, 34. " Strabo, iii. 1, 5. ^ Ellis, Poljn. Kes., vol. ii. p. 414. 



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