In what way the fabulous islands of the Atlantic originated is not known, nor has the subject been exhaustively investigated. The islands of classical times, in part actual discoveries, in part born of confused reports of actual discoveries, and in part probably purely mythical, were very generally forgotten as ancient civilization declined.[453] The other islands which succeeded them were in part reminiscences of the islands known to the ancients or invented by them, and in part products of a popular mythology, as old perhaps as that of the Greeks, but until now unknown to letters. The writers who have dealt with these islands have treated them generally from the purely geographic point of view. The islands are known principally from maps, beginning with the fourteenth century, and are not often met with in descriptive works. Formaleoni, in his attempt to show that the Venetians had discovered the West Indies prior to Columbus, made studies of the older maps which naturally led him to devote considerable attention to these islands.[454] They are also considered by Zurla.[455] The first general account of them was given by Humboldt in the _Examen Critique_,[456] and to what he did little if anything has since been added. D’Avezac[457] treated the subject, giving a brief sketch of the islands known to the Arab geographers,—a curious matter which deserves more attention. Still more recently Paul Gaffarel has treated the matter briefly, but carefully.[458] A study of old maps by H. Wuttke, in the _Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden_,[459] gives considerable attention to the islands; and Theobald Fischer, in his commentary on the collection of maps reproduced by Ongania, has briefly touched on the subject,[460] as has Cornelio Desimoni in various papers in the _Atti della Società Ligure di Storia patria_, xiv., and other years, in the _Atti dell’ Acad. dei Nuova Lincei_, in the _Gionale ligustico_, etc. R. H. Major’s _Henry the Navigator_ should also be consulted.[461] * * * * *