[99] Melpom. lxxxvi.
[100] Ibid. lvi.
[101] This supposed diminution of the Black Sea and Sea of Asoph, has also been attributed to the rupture of the Bosphorus, which had taken place at the pretended period of the deluge of Deucalion; and yet, in order to establish the fact itself, recourse is had to successive diminutions of the extent attributed to these seas by Herodotus, Strabo, and others. But it is very obvious, that, if this diminution had arisen from the rupture of the Bosphorus, it would necessarily have been completed long before the time of Herodotus, and even at the period at which Deucalion is supposed to have lived.
[102] See the Geography of Herodotus by M. Rennel, p. 56. et seq.; and the Physical Geography of the Black Sea, &c. by M. Dureau de Lamalle. There is only at present the small river of Kamennoipost, that could represent the Gerrhus and Hypacyris, such as they are described by Herodotus.
M. Dureau, p. 170, supposes Herodotus to have made the Borysthenes and Hypanis discharge themselves into the Palus Mæotis; but Herodotus (in Melpom. liii.) only says that these two rivers fall together into the same lake, that is, into the Liman, as at the present day. Herodotus does not carry the Gerrhus and Hypacyris any farther.
[103] For example, M. Dureau de Lamalle, in his Physical Geography of the Black Sea, quotes Aristotle (Meteor. lib. i. cap. 13.) as “apprising us, that, in his time, there still existed several ancient periods and peripli, attesting that there had been a canal leading from the Caspian Sea into the Palus Mæotis.” Now, Aristotle’s words at the place mentioned (Duval’s edition, i. 545. B.) are merely these: “From the Paropamisus, descend, among other rivers, the Bactrus, the Choaspes, and the Araxis, from which the Tanais, which is a branch of it, takes its origin, into the Palus Mæotis.” Who does not see that this nonsense, which is neither founded upon peripli nor periods, is nothing else than the strange idea of Alexander’s soldiers, who took the Jaxartes or Tanais of the Transoxian for the Don or Tanais of Scythia? Arrian and Pliny distinguish these two rivers from each other, but the distinction does not appear to have been made in the time of Aristotle. How, then, could such geographers as these furnish us with geological documents?
[104] See the Report upon the Downs of the Gulf of Gascony (or Bay of Biscay) by M. Tassin.—Mont. de-Marsan, an x.
[105] Memoir on the means of fixing Downs, by M. Bremontier.
[106] Report of M. Tassin, loc. cit.
[107] See M. Bremontier’s Memoir.