His Views os 
the Distribution 
of Land and 
Water. 
BaTUVMKTIUCAL 
Data. 
Makjnk Clkkjsntb 
in Brack Ska 
AND iftitlX. 
10 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
><> very far wrong who suppose the region about the Pillars of Hercules and that about 
India to be contiguous, and that there is but one sea (in the part opposite to the 
ini ib ted world), and they point by way of proof to the elephants, these animals being 
found in both regions, though at the extremes of the earth, this fact showing that the 
extremes are really near each other .” 1 
Many quotations might be given to shew what correct ideas Aristotle held con- 
■ ernr g the general configuration of the world, and the horizontal extension of continents 
and seas. The habitable world is divided into islands and continents ; our world itself 
is but an island surrounded by a sea called the Atlantic. In a more restricted sense the 
Atlantic is only a part of the external sea which bathes the western confines of habitable 
land, the other parts of the environing sea having then special appellations ; to the 
north the Boreal or Cronian, to the east and south the Southern or Erythraean. The 
surrounding ocean sends arms into the land, forming special and peculiar seas. At 
the south, the Indian Gulf, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Gulf, are formed by the 
Trvthhean. At the west the Internal Sea (Mediterranean) penetrates from the Atlantic 
into the bosom of the land by the narrow passage of the Columns of Hercules. The 
Mediterranean itself ramifies into several seas, shut in by the diverse peninsulas which 
project from Europe and Asia. Of these seas the most advanced into the land is the 
or the sea par excellence; it has parts called whirlpools (fiaOea) so deep that 
the h id has never reached the bottom. With the exception of these points the depth 
o' the Internal Sea goes on increasing towards the west. The Pontus is deeper than 
i ■ Lake Mseotis, the iEgean deeper than the Pontus, the Tyrrhenian and Sardinian Seas 
deeper than all the others . 2 These bathymetrical data, being the first found in the 
writings of antiquity, have much interest notwithstanding their want of exactness. 
Before Aristotle, navigators must necessarily have possessed a knowledge of depths, at 
least at certain determinate points, but Aristotle was the first, apparently, to generalise 
th se bati metrical notions of the internal seas of Europe. 
A illustrating the slow movements and changes which continents and seas undergo, 
An-totle remark' in his Meteorology that the Sea of Azov (Palus Mseotis) was being filled 
up. and that it would ultimately become land . 8 He mentions the currents which flow from 
th >.-a of Azov into the Black Sea, and from the Black Sea into the iEgean, and attributes 
the cause of these movements to the inequalities of depth in these seas. It was especially 
t<> t ! io seas in the neighbourhood of Greece that he directed his attention; he had no 
new vi- w- in regard to the great external ocean, which he stated, in accordance with the 
idi > generally admitted in his time, to be muddy and little agitated by winds ( airvoa ). 4 
* Aristotle, Dc Oi l, ii. 15 ; Berger, op. tit., p. 142. 
1 Aj e lie, Meteorologioi, ii. 12-14 ; Berger, op. tit., p. iii. 3 Aristotle, Meteorologies, i. 14, sec. 29. 
Bunbury (op. tit., voL i. p. 398) says it is remarkable that no other notice of the ocean or its tides is to be found 
I orologica : indeed, the very name of the ocean only occurs in ODe passage in this treatise in reference to the 
opinions of “the ancient- " concerning it (Meteor., i. 9, sec. 6). 
