SUCCESSIVE CHANGES ON THE SHORES OF THE CRIMEA. 
575 
produced still more decided changes, — changes whereby the grounds which are 
known to have been formerly submerged, have been placed at some height above 
the waters. 
In this manner, we necessarily distinguish the changes which occurred in the 
tract between the Palus Mseotis and the Black Sea, before the times of the Greeks 
and Romans, from those which can have been since produced by the mere incre- 
ment of fluviatile deltas or blown sands at the river mouths. The origin of the 
peninsula of Kertch and the Isles of the Kuban, must, we agree with M. Dubois de 
Montpereux, be referred to such elevation of the land'. 
Changes produced by Mud Volcanoes, fyc . — That similar elevations have been in 
progress from still remoter antiquity in all these southern regions, we have already 
attempted to show, and particularly in regard to the bottom of a former great 
Caspian Sea which we have proved to have been upheaved and desiccated at suc- 
cessive periods. Now the very coasts of the Chersonesus where marked changes 
have occurred in the historic sera, are in the vicinity, or, it may even be said, in 
the ancient line of elevation of the Caucasus and the Crimsea, along and parallel 
to which, mud volcanoes have been erupted, that have continued in action to the 
present day, and have raised up land above the waters which did not exist in the 
time of the ancient historians. 
1 For a complete illustration of this branch of our subject, we gladly refer to a most instructive plate 
in the work of our distinguished contemporary, M. Dubois de Montpereux. That plate contains five 
small maps, each representing the condition of the tract between Circassia and the Caucasus on the one 
hand, and the Crimsea on the other, during successive periods. In the first the Chersonesus Tauricus 
appears as a cretaceous promontory, separated by a wide strait from another advanced cretaceous spur 
of the Caucasus (Circassia),— in short, after the elevation of the chalk, and when the tertiary deposits 
were nearly completed, a few of their coral islands only appearing above the waters to the north of the 
strait. The next map exhibits the tract after the elevation of the tertiary formations, by which move- 
ment the peninsula of Kertch was united with the Crimsea very much in its present form, yet when a few 
isles only and the Cimmerian Bosphorus had been formed. The third gives the apparition of Taman and 
several adjacent isles of the Kuban through the eruption of mud volcanoes. The fourth, which is the 
historical portrait of the outlines, as restored from the writings of Strabo, exhibits the chief islets of the 
Kuban already united with the main land, yet leaving free maritime passages for the Greek sailors of 
those days, to the east and south of the Cimmerian Isle, with the river Hypanis flowing to the north-west 
into the embayed waters between the Cimmerian Isle and the Sindic promontory. The fifth and last 
plan, as taken from an accurate map of 1834, shows how the Hypanis (the present Kuban) has changed 
its course, and now flows to the south and west below the former bindic promontory, which was thus 
converted into the isle or peninsula of Taman, whilst the larger islets are almost united, and some of the 
smaller absolutely joined to the main land (the old sea-passages being blocked up) by the great increment 
of deltic matter. 
4 e 2 
