320 HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 



had always said so and believed it themselves. Withal they 

 appealed to the observation^ that there were many bones of 

 whales found on all burning mountains. I asked whence come 

 the flames there sometimes, and they answered, when the 

 spirits have heated up their mountains as we do our yurts, they 

 fling the rest of the brands out up the chimney, so as to be 

 able to shut up. They said moreover, God in heaven some- 

 times does so too at the time when it is our summer and his 

 winter, and he warms up his yurt ; whereby they explain the 

 veneration of the lightning. ^'^ 



In the geological theories of classical times, the inference 

 from fossil shells found inland, high or low above the sea level, 

 was commonly that the sea had once been there, though it need 

 not always follow that it was the sea which had since changed 

 its level. Herodotus argues from the shells on the mountains 

 in Egypt,^ and Xanthus from the fossil shells, like cockles and 

 scallops, which he had seen far from the sea, that there had 

 been sea in old times where the land had since been left dry. 

 Eratosthenes notices the existence of quantities of oyster-shells 

 and bits of wreck of seagoing ships near the temple of Ammon, 

 far inland in Libya, while Strato expresses the opinion that 

 this temple was once close to the sea, though since thrown 

 inland by the retiring of the waters.^ Describing the region 

 of Numidia farther west, Pomponius Mela relates that, " In- 

 land and far enough from the coast (if the thing be credible) 

 they tell that in a wondrous way the spines of fish, and frag- 

 ments of murex and oyster-shells, stones worn in the ordinary 

 manner by the waves and not diflFering from those of the sea, 

 anchors fixed in the rocks, and other similar signs and vestiges 

 of the sea that once spread to those places, exist and are found 

 on the barren plains."* So Ovid says in his remarkable state- 

 ment of the Pythagorean doctrines, — 



" Et procul a pelago concise jacuere marinse 

 Et Tetus inventa est in montibus anchora summis," 



and argues thence that sea has. been converted into land.^ 



» SteUer, p. 47. = Herod., ii. 12. ^ Strabo, i. 3, 4. 



■• Mela, i. c. 6. * Ov. Met., xv. 264. 



