good sample of critical ignorance. He had not read Herodotus, or he could not understand him.

Herodotus (vii. 125) says, that the army of Xerxes, on its march from Acanthus to Therme (afterwards Thessalonica), was annoyed by lions, which seized the camels that carried the provisions. The fine silver coins of Acanthus contain on the reverse a spirited figure of a lion on the back of a bull with his claws and teeth fixed in him. Herodotus adds, that in this part of Greece there were lions in his time, and that the lion was found in the tract between the river Nestus and the Achelous in Acarnania, but nowhere else in Europe. Aristotle (Hist. Anim. vi. 31) also states that the lion is found between the Nestus and the Achelous. Pliny (Nat. Hist. viii. 16) follows Aristotle.

GEORGE LONG.

V.

A DISSERTATION ON A SECOND BOSPORUS CIMMERIUS, AND SEVERAL RIVERS OF THE PALUS MÆOTIS'.

ANCIENT geography has always been considered as one of the most difficult branches of knowledge. However, Ptolemy, Strabo, Mela, Pliny, were popular among their countrymen who understood them easily, and who believed their statements with a readiness which was neither guided nor disturbed by that spirit of critical investigation which is one of the most striking features of modern science. Criticism, that is doubt, comparison, and conclusion, is now the indispensable condition without which scientific conviction cannot be obtained. As to ancient geography in particular, there was among the Greeks and Romans a considerable stock of knowledge, the result of experience and tradition, which existed alongside that knowledge which was contained in the works of so many distinguished authors. The ancient geographers of course pre

The substance of this paper, but re- | Geographical Society of Paris, in the presenting the subject, in a somewhat month of August, 1842. ED. different light, was read in the Royal

sented fewer difficulties to their contemporaries than to us, because their readers were generally able to complete deficiencies, and to understand rough sketches which present to us as many insurmountable difficulties. In many cases we cannot understand those geographers, because we have no knowledge of the physical changes which rivers, lakes, shores, and similar localities, have gradually undergone during the long period which separates their age from our own. As to names, a great number of them still exist, though partly altered or mutilated. The original form of others has entirely disappeared, but they are preserved in translations; for as they had an expressive meaning, they were translated into the language of those nations which succeeded the Greeks and Romans in the dominion of the countries in which

those names are to be found. This is especially the case in Thrace, Illyria, Macedonia, Epirus, Asia Minor, and the countries round the Euxine, where a great number of Roman and Greek names are still to be recognized in a Slavonic or Turkish translation. Sometimes also, when the ancients are obscure in the description of important localities, it is evident that a detailed description appeared useless to them, those spots being then universally known. They wrote for the practical want of their contemporaries, and not for the scientific curiosity of later generations. In short, the knowledge of the ancients was in a great measure the result of hearing, seeing, and oral discussions; they cultivated their minds by educating their senses.

Revolutions of the soil, and alterations of names, are generally the results of a slow process; and many a century is required before the primitive state of things entirely disappears either from the surface of the earth or from the memory of a nation. Such revolutions may have been observed by later geographers, who either purposely or accidentally communicated their observations to their contemporaries, and thus to posterity. Our knowledge of the ancient times will therefore often derive many a valuable contribution from observations made during subsequent centuries. It might have happened, for example, that the Greeks of Constantinople defended their declining empire against the sword of the Khalifs, or the arrows of the Bulgarians, on a plain but imperfectly described by a contemporary of Augustus; and a Byzantine writer, in his descrip

tion of the battle-field, might happen to give us that circumstantial information which we miss in the imperfect account of the other. The dulness of the middle ages has overshadowed ancient science, art, and enlightened opinions. A Frankish historian will be a bad source for the knowledge of the government of the Cæsars; a monk of mount Athos is regarded as a bad critic, when he condemns the mythology of his ancestors; and the Byzantine artists who built the first Christian church on the banks of the Borysthenes, and adorned it with the painting of the Virgin on gold ground, would scarcely have been able to appreciate the master-works of Apelles and Phidias. But it is not so with geography, a science which has derived more information from the keen eye of a soldier, or the vigilance of an unlettered sailor, than from the meditations of Plato and Aristotle.

The geographical observations made during the middle ages are as correct as those of Pliny and Strabo; and whether they are made by Arabs, Greeks, or Latins, they will often be useful for the understanding of obscure passages of the ancients.

The statements of Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy, and Arrian, concerning the Bosporus Cimmerius, the present island of Taman, and the mouths of the Kuban, which seem to be, and partly are, so very contradictory, derive a satisfactory explanation from a Greek author of the middle ages. This is Constantine Porphyrogeneta, who wrote his geography under circumstances and with an object which are too important in determining the trustworthiness of the author, not to deserve a few remarks.

The century, in which the emperor Constantine Porphyrogeneta lived, was a dangerous epoch for the Byzantine empire, which was then constantly exposed to the invasions of the Russians, a nation whose first appearance in history took place under strange circumstances. In the ninth and tenth centuries they were under the sway of the Waregues or Normans, who, still fond of the piratical life of their ancestors, forced the continental nations, which they had vanquished in the very heart of the boundless woods of Sarmatia, to undertake maritime expeditions. Kiew, the capital of the Norman-Russian empire, was situated at a distance of almost three hundred miles from the Euxine, but on following the curve of the Borysthenes, on the banks of which that city was, and is still