Note 103 — Additions of Land by the Action of Rivers.

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?