1883.] New Theory concerning the Burning Mountains. 327 
proceeded from the east to the west. To account for this 
undeniable fadt he is obliged to establish a colony of his 
Atlanteans in Egypt before they had attempted to subdue 
regions much nearer to their own country. 
It will not be forgotten that he in his map includes the 
whole of Greece and the West of Asia within the Atlantean 
empire. But according to Plato’s Timceus, in a document 
which Mr. Donnelly regards as historically authentic, and 
upon which he builds no small part of his argument, the 
Atlanteans had conquered Africa only up to Egypt, and 
Europe up to Tyrrhenia ( i.e ., Tuscany). Then making a 
grand attempt to subjugate Egypt and Greece, they were 
finally defeated by the Athenians, and stripped of all their 
dominions in the Mediterranean. If this narrative, then, be 
authentic, Egypt can never have been an Atlantean colony. 
The author’s assumption that civilisation radiated out- 
wards from the Mediterranean is not in all cases admissible. 
In Egypt it appears to have descended the Nile. We can- 
not carry further our survey of the speculations contained 
in this extraordinary work. But whilst holding that Mr. 
Donnelly has not made his case good, and that he relies too 
much upon that dangerous form of argument which maybe 
generalised in the terms “ Why may not A be X ?” we yet 
think that he has raised a number of most interesting ques- 
tions, especially in Ethnology. These, competent inquirers 
will find every way worthy of their attention. 
III. A NEW THEORY CONCERNING THE 
BURNING MOUNTAINS. 
By A. H. Swinton. 
c* j > 
* T is interesting to note that the late prevalence of solar 
spots has inaugurated another eruption of historical 
Etna. The last period of eruption was in evident con- 
nection with the clearness of the solar disk in 1878, and the 
present statistics will eventually prove to stand similarly in 
connection with its spottiness in 1882. Often the periods 
of spots and no spots bring us to combined outbreaks from 
Etna and Vesuvius; it was so in 1689, 1694, 1723, 1755, 
