Such is the tale of Atlantis. Read in Plato, the nature and meaning of the narrative seem clear, but the commentators, ancient and modern, have made wild work. The voyage of Odysseus has grown marvellously in extent since he abandoned the sea; Io has found the pens of the learned more potent goads than Hera’s gadfly; but the travels of Atlantis have been even more extraordinary. No region has been so remote, no land so opposed by location, extent, or history to the words of Plato, but that some acute investigator has found in it the origin of the lost island. It has been identified with Africa, with Spitzbergen, with Palestine. The learned Latreille convinced himself that Persia best fulfilled the conditions of the problem; the more than learned Rudbeck ardently supported the claims of Sweden through three folios. In such a search America could not be overlooked. Gomara, Guillaume de Postel, Wytfliet, are among those who have believed that this continent was Atlantis; Sanson in 1669, and Vaugondy in 1762, ventured to issue a map, upon which the division of that island among the sons of Neptune was applied to America, and the outskirts of the lost continent were extended even to New Zealand. Such work, of course, needs no serious consideration. Plato is our authority, and Plato declares that Atlantis lay not far west from Spain, and that it disappeared some 8,000 years before his day. An inquiry into the truth or meaning of the record as it stands is quite justifiable, and has been several times undertaken, with divergent results. Some, notably Paul Gaffarel[299] and Ignatius Donnelly,[300] are convinced that Plato merely adapted to his purposes a story which Solon had actually brought from Egypt, and which was in all essentials true. Corroboration of the existence of such an island in the Atlantic is found, according to these writers, in the physical conformation of the Atlantic basin, and in marked resemblances between the flora, fauna, civilization, and language of the old and new worlds, which demand for their explanation the prehistoric existence of just such a bridge as Atlantis would have supplied. The Atlantic islands are the loftiest peaks and plateaus of the submerged island. In the widely spread deluge myths Mr. Donnelly finds strong confirmation of the final cataclysm; he places in Atlantis that primitive culture which M. Bailly sought in the highlands of Asia, and President Warren refers to the north pole. Space fails for a proper examination of the matter, but these ingenious arguments remain somewhat top-heavy when all is said. The argument from ethnological resemblances is of all arguments the weakest in the hands of advocates. It is of value only when wielded by men of judicial temperament, who can weigh difference against likeness, and allow for the narrow range of nature’s moulds. The existence of the ocean plateaus revealed by the soundings of the “Dolphin” and the