1876.] 
The Cradle of Civilisation . 
447 
recorded in the traditions of other nations. But how could 
such a change be effected ? An alteration in the plane of 
the ecliptic could produce no such result if we take the 
entire year into consideration, since if the sun attained a 
less altitude at the one solstice it would be greater at the 
other. Nor could a change in the eccentricity of the earth’s 
orbit. The only occurrence that could cause the sun to 
attain a lower general altitude at any place than had been 
formerly the case would be the removal of such place 
farther from the Equator, and consequently nearer to the 
Pole. Now, such changes have indeed been known to occur 
on a small scale in landslips and earthquakes, but that an 
entire country should execute a horizontal movement of 
translation is a supposition not warranted by recorded fadts. 
That there may have been a time — or rather times — when 
frost was of rare occurrence in north-western Europe is 
highly probable. When France, Britain, and Germany dis- 
played a semi-tropical flora, and when even Iceland, Lapland, 
and Spitzbergen had their forests of beeches and oaks, frost 
would doubtless be of rare occurrence ; but there is no evi- 
dence that a period of this kind fell so recently as 2190 B.c., 
or, in other words, 4000 years ago. PI ere, then, is a deci- 
dedly mythological feature — the transposition of an event 
from its own to a later date. 
The account of the “ bad time ” is, further, inconsistent, 
for though frosts now occur over most of the countries 
claimed as parts of the old Frisian dominion, yet wheat 
still ripens in every one of the countries specified, with the 
exception, perhaps, of Scandinavia. As to a heat sufficient 
to bake the wheat in the fields, we need scarcely say that 
since the earth became habitable no such temperature ever 
existed. On the other hand the “ bad time ” consisted in an 
alteration of the surface of the earth ; portions of land were 
submerged, such as Atland, and in their stead land arose 
where formerly sea had existed. The case, therefore, was 
neither subsidence nor elevation, but a combination of both, 
and could not have been produced by a change in the posi- 
tion of the earth’s centre of gravity, and a consequent 
transference of the main volume of the waters from one 
hemisphere to the other. Had it fallen two centuries earlier 
it might possibly have been identified by divines with the 
Noachian deluge. 
The geography of the story is also somewhat obscure. 
If the Frisians occupied the country “to the extremity of 
the East Sea ” and the banks of the Rhine from one end to 
the other, where was Twisklanden, the country of the 
