introduced as an emendation by Grosskurd, in consequence of a passage in Strabo,[LR] gives in place of Mœris, “the Lake Halmyris,” but the latter was situated near the southern mouth of the Danube. The Sluice-theory of Strato led Eratosthenes of Cyrene (the most celebrated in the series of the librarians of Alexandria) to investigate the problem of the uniformity of level in all external seas flowing round continents, although with less success than Archimedes in his treatise on floating bodies.[LS] The articulation of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean as well as the form of its peninsulas and islands had given origin to the geognostic myth of the ancient land of Lyctonia. The origin of the lesser Syrtis, of the Triton Lake,[LT] and of the whole of Western Atlas,[LU] had been embodied in an imaginary scheme of fire-eruptions and earthquakes.[LV] I have recently entered more fully into this question,[LW] in a passage with which I would be allowed to close this note: “The northern shore of the Mediterranean possesses the advantage of being more richly and variously articulated than the southern or Lybian shore, and this was, according to Strabo, already noticed by Eratosthenes. Here we find three peninsulas, the Iberian, the Italian, and the Hellenic, which, owing to their various and deeply indented contour, form, together with the neighbouring islands and the opposite coasts, many straits and isthmuses. Such a configuration of continents and of islands that have been partly severed and partly upheaved by volcanic agency in rows, as if over far-extending fissures, early led to geognostic views regarding eruptions, terrestrial revolutions, and outpourings of the swollen higher seas into those below them. The Euxine, the Dardanelles, the Straits of Gades, and the Mediterranean with its numerous islands, were well fitted to originate such a system of sluices. The Orphic Argonaut, who probably lived in the Christian era, has interwoven old mythical narrations in his composition. He sings of the division of the ancient Lyctonia into separate islands, ‘when the dark-haired Poseidon in anger with Father Kronion struck Lyctonia with the golden trident.’ Similar fancies, which may often certainly have sprung from an imperfect knowledge of geographical relations, were frequently elaborated in the erudite Alexandrian school, which was so devoted to everything connected with antiquity. Whether the myth of the breaking up of Atlantis be a vague and western reflection of that of Lyctonia, as I have elsewhere shown to be probable, or whether, according to Otfried Müller, ‘the destruction of Lyctonia (Leuconia) refers to the Samothracian tradition of a great flood, which changed the form of that district,’ is a question which it is here unnecessary to decide.” Footnote 79: p. 217—“_Precipitation from the clouds_.”