1881.] the Distribution of Land and Sea. 13 
Egypt ? The rumour is, further, made to take a form flatter- 
ing to the Greeks, and especially to the Athenians, by whose 
valour the great Atlantis invasion is said to have been re- 
pelled. But this invasion, if it occurred at all, must have 
taken place at an exceedingly early epoch. Otherwise a 
man like Solon would have undoubtedly heard of it at home. 
And it is evidently unlikely, to use the mildest term, that at 
such a remote time the power of Athens could have been 
sufficient to oppose an inroad designed for the conquest of 
Europe and Asia. The remaining Greek writers seem to 
have merely given echoes of the Platonic tradition. 
It has also been pointed out that almost every nation bor- 
dering upon the ocean indulges in mythic accounts of the 
former extent of its territory, and of provinces or adjacent 
islands submerged in the ocean. As instances we may cite 
the legends of Lionness, stretching out to the west of Corn- 
wall, or of “ Aldland ” to the west of Jutland.* Hence 
the coincidences of Greek and of Toltec tradition become 
of less value. The European dreamt of lost lands to the 
westward as did the Mexican to the eastward. 
If we turn from human traditions to actually existing 
things we find fadfs difficult to reconcile with the existence 
of the hypothetical island. The Azores, with the exception 
of one small deposit of supposed Miocene age, in the islet 
of Santa Maria, are wholly volcanic, a very improbable 
feature if they had been the mountain-residue of a large 
island. The small miocene beds just mentioned likewise 
contradidl the supposition that they might have been up- 
heaved by volcanic adlion since the submergence of Atlantis. 
Had the Azores been the remnant of an extensive country 
their animal population would doubtless have exhibited cor- 
responding features. In reality, however, they contain not 
a single snake, frog, or fresh-water fish, and only such mam- 
mals as have been introduced by human agency. The birds, 
insedts, and land-shells, too, are evidently the descendants 
of stragglers, carried over by storms or currents from the 
nearest land, and having a strikingly European charadter. 
Of the eighteen species of resident land-birds found in 
the islands, all save three are common in Europe and 
North Africa. Hence the inference is forced upon us that 
the Azores are not surviving fragments of Atlantis. 
We are thus brought to the threshold, so to speak, of a 
controversy that is now being carried on as to the perma- 
nence or the mutability of the general distribution of land 
and water on our globe. Have “ the great continents and 
Journal of Science, 1876, p. 444. 
