SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
25 
wind was called HippaJus in honour of this navigator. Coast routes, followed up to his 
time, were abandoned, and a fresh impetus was given to voyages in oriental waters. 
Pomponius Mela, 1 who belongs to the same epoch, gives a few details referring to the Pomponius Mela. 
morphology of the ocean. He points out that four seas are, so to speak, deducted from 
the great ocean that surrounds the world, and penetrate into the bosom of the land , the 
Scythian Ocean thus forms the Caspian, arms of the Indian Ocean form the Persian and 
Arabian Gulfs, and, lastly, a fourth sea runs into the land from the west, but is 
designated by no special name. Up to this period the Romans had no other appellation 
for the Mediterranean than that of Mare Nostrum . 2 Mela does not even employ the 
name Mare Internum , which is sometimes met with in Pliny’s writings. Solinus 3 was 
the first to make use of the word Mediterranean. 4 Mela refers to the existence of the 
continent of the Antichthones, in the southern temperate zone, separated from the south 
of Africa and Asia by the Ethiopian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, but 
inaccessible on account of the intervening torrid tract. This hypothetical continent 
includes the island of Ceylon, and is, indeed, in a sense, an immense extension of that 
island towards the west. 5 (See Plate IV.). 
The philosopher Seneca 6 applied himself with ardour to the study of nature, and his Fibst Century 
seven books of Physical Investigations (Quaestiones Naturales) may be considered as g rxi/. A 
presenting a general view of the knowledge of the ancients concerning the natural 
sciences. He supposes that the world, at its origin, was a chaos, in which the elements 
dissolved in the water separated out in the course of time. Igneous action, vigorous 
at first, became extinguished finally, and there remained only water at the birth 
of the actual world. He divides the waters of the globe into (l) oceanic waters, 
which are from all eternity, and form the principal mass, the source from which all others 
are derived ; (2) subterranean waters, which circulate in the faults of the subsoil, and 
appear at the surface in the form of springs ; (3) waters which circulate or remain stagnant 
on the top of the soil ; (4) waters in the form of vapours disseminated in the atmos- 
phere. He has very exact notions on evaporation, but he supposes that all the elements 
can be derived the one from the other, and that water, in particular, may be derived 
from earth. 7 The course of the water in the air permits it to level the surface of the earth, Seneca’s view 
and to work incessantly in pulling down that which the volcanic forces have built up ; °- v K -' , iX 
although the action of this element is less striking than that of fire, its effect is not less Action of w A tl-r. 
considerable. In virtue, especially, of its continuous action, water affects the solid bodie- 
which constitute the land by dissolving and disintegrating them and transporting them, 
1 Flourished about 43 B.c. 
2 “ Id omne, qua venit, quaque dispergitur uno vocabulo Nostrum Mare dicitur” (i. sec. 6). 
3 Flourished in the third century a.d. 4 Solinus, c. 24. 
5 See Bunhury, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 353. 6 Born a few years b.c. 
7 “ Quod hunt omnia ex omnibus, ex aqua aer, ex aere aqua, ignis ex aere, ex igne aer ; quare ergo non e term fiat 
aqua 1 ” 
(summary op results chall, exp. — 1894.) 4 
