i88i.] 
Atlantis and Lemuria. 
ii 
II. ATLANTIS AND LEMURIA : 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF LAND AND SEA.* 
CL=L 
t T would seem as if every science, how rigorous soever in 
its methods and teachings, had yet some region where 
free scope is given to the imagination, and where research 
and romance seem to blend insensibly into each other. 
Astronomy has its doftrine of a central sun ; physics is barely 
freed from the haunting presence of the perpetual motion ; 
chemistry is seeking the decomposition of the elements, and 
biology craves to effedt the origin of life from inorganic 
matter. Geology, physical geography, — if we may use so 
old-fashioned a term, — and mythology are the joint tenants 
of a “ garden of phantasy,” not of the future but of the past; 
to wit, the assumed islands, or even continents, which 
are said to have been swallowed up by the ocean. Of these 
supposed regions one, known as “ Lemuria,” is by some 
considered to have extended from Madagascar to Ceylon, 
or perhaps to Java; whilst another ideal continent which 
has received no name may, it is thought, have occupied the 
tropical portions of the Pacific, the scattered island-groups 
marking out its former mountain-chains. These two lands 
are not, we believe, the subjects of any popular tradition, 
nor do they figure in the works of poets and historians. They 
have been inferred, or at least assumed, by men of science 
in order to account for certain perplexing fadts in the distri- 
bution of plants and animals. 
Very different is the case with “ lost Atlantis.” In the 
days of classical antiquity the former existence of a large 
island or continent to the westward of Africa was a matter 
not merely of general belief, but it was referred to in a very 
decided manner by such writers as Plato, Theopompus, 
Plutarch, Herodotus, and Diodorus Siculus. All these 
authors speak of Atlantis as a very large, fruitful, and 
populous territory, whose inhabitants had come in contadl 
with the nations of Europe and Africa, and had even 
attempted the subjugation of the eastern continent. 
At first sight we are naturally disposed to regard these 
stories as distorted accounts of America, of whose existence 
some vague rumours had doubtless reached the so-called 
* Oceans and Continents. By T. Mellard Reade, C.E., F.G.S., &c. 
London : Trubner and Co. 
