of Maximus Tyrius, a Platonic philosopher who lived in Rome under Commodus. _His_ Atlas is situated “on the continent where the Western Lybians inhabit a projecting peninsula.” The mountain has a deep semi-circular abyss on the side nearest the sea; and its declivities are so steep that they cannot be descended. The abyss is filled with trees, and “one looks down upon their summits and the fruits they bear as if one were looking into a well.”[ET] The description is so minute and graphic that it no doubt sprung from the recollection of some actual view. Footnote 23: p. 9.—“_The Mountains of the Moon, Djebel-al-Komr._” The Mountains of the Moon described by Ptolemy,[EU] σελήνης ὄρος, form on our older maps a vast uninterrupted mountain chain, traversing the whole of Africa from east to west. The existence of these mountains seems certain; but their extent, their distance from the equator, and their mean direction, still remain problematical. I have indicated in another work[EV] the manner in which a more intimate acquaintance with Indian idioms and the ancient Persian or Zend teaches us that a part of the geographical nomenclature of Ptolemy constitutes an historical memorial of the commercial relations that existed between the West and the remotest regions of Southern Asia and Eastern Africa. The same direction of ideas is apparent in relation to a subject that has very recently become a matter of investigation. It is asked, whether the great geographer and astronomer of Pelusium merely meant in the denomination of Mountains of the Moon (as in that of “Island of Barley,” (Jabadiu, Java) to give the Greek translation of the native name of those mountains; whether, as is most probable, El-Istachri, Edrisi, Ibn-al-Vardi, and other early Arabian geographers, simply transferred the Ptolemaic nomenclature into their own language; or whether similarity in the sound of the word and the manner in which it was written misled them? In the notes to the translation of Abd-Allatif’s celebrated description of Egypt, my great teacher, Silvestre de Sacy,[EW] expressly says, “The name of the mountains regarded by Leo Africanus as furnishing the sources of the Nile, has generally been rendered ‘Mountains of the Moon,’ and I have adhered to the same practice. I do not know whether the Arabs originally borrowed this denomination from Ptolemy. It may indeed be inferred that at the present day they understand the word ‏قمر‎ in the sense of _moon_, pronouncing it _kamar_; I do not think however, that such was the practice of the older Arabs, who pronounced it _komr_, as has been proved by Makrizi. Aboulfeda positively rejects the opinion of those who would adopt the pronunciation _kamar_, and derive the word from the name of the moon. As, according to the author of _Kamous_, the word _komr_, considered as the plural of ‏اقمر‎, signifies an object of a greenish or dirty white colour, it would appear that some authors have supposed that this