was partly Finnic, and further north-east on the Oxus, where the forms of speech were still more Hyperborean. Even Delos had three priestesses natives of the distant north.* The ethnologist just quoted observes, that in the remote ages there is no doubt that some of the Caucasian tribes, once extended along the southern coast of the Caspian and Georgia, onward to the Borysthenes, and through Asia Minor to the mountains of Thessaly and Greece.

The Finnic Scythæ gave rise to the legends of the Bergmen, where the forging Alfen dwelt, who in Asia, Scandinavia, and Germany were miners and sword smiths.† Herodotus says that the Cabiri were worshipped at Memphis as the sons of the god of fire, or Hephaistus, and that they were, like the Phenician dwarf gods, affixed to the prows of their ships. He calls the Phenician dwarf-gods "Pataik." As distorted dwarfs they were brought to Samo-Thracia, and their statues placed in the porch.

In the coins of Cossyra the figure of the dwarf of ancient mythology closely accords with that of the mining dwarf. The metallurgical powers of the Hyperborean, i. e. Finnic tribes, are expressly noticed by Herodotus, who saw an immense copper vessel manufactured from the spear-heads of the nation, the product of a species of statistic account of that population, thus taken at the command of their king. If it be allowable to be guided by a strong philological evidence, we should be inclined to attribute to Samos, a Celto-Finnic colonization, a people of Caucasian origin topically, and of Arian affiliation ethnologically, considered.‡

66 AP," AP, AF, АВ.

To impress upon the mind the importance of the AnteHellenic vocable "Ap," it will be well to show its connexion

Col. Smith's Nat. Hist. of Man, p. 373.

+ Col. Hamilton Smith, ut ante, p. 290.

Strabo informs us that Samos was so denominated from an ancient word of that form, signifying “a height." Now the same word is expressed in Georgian by "Semō;" hence the heights of the west of L. Van are called "Sim." If, however, the extensive marshes which at present exist in Samos could be proved to have been prevalent in antiquity, we should be furnished with direct evidences of an unquestionable Fin settlement, since the epithet "same," and "suome," signifying a "swamp" or "marsh," is the well known ethnic of the Fins.

The corresponding Arian vocable to the Hellenic Samos, and the Georgian "Semo," is the Latin Summa" (the French “Somme") and the Celtic "Ceim." It is very singular that the high calcareous mountain of Georgia, called "Olum.ba," should bear such a striking similarity to the Thessalian *Olumpos," for which the usual Hellenic oλvμ is the received etymon.

66

66

with the fluvial title of the chief stream of Bœotia, the Asopus. As and Asoo are Zendic terms, identical with the Sanscrit Asu or Açoo, quick, in fact the Greek wkus," rapid. Hence the true origin of the Baotian Assus, or the rapid," a term equivalent to the Spercheus or the “ speed." In combination with "Apa," water or a river, it regularly forms the Greek As-õpus.* With the first member of the compound is immediately connected "Aswa," a horse, as expressive of "swiftness;" just as the bird, "a swift," is from the English adjective swift; a fountain or "spring," from the verbal root" to spring;" or as the Sansc. haya, a horse, from " haya," to go. Hence the name As-opus, is highly descriptive of one of those mountain streams which are so characteristic of Greece. When crossed by Leake, the channel of the Asopus was quite dry.t Nor is the river of Doris, Acuphas, ought but a variant of Açopus, or Asōpus. The river-gods of the Baotian and Peloponnesian Asopus, were famed in mythology: nor is the account of Asopus the supposed name given of the Peloponnesian stream, less mythological, since we are now able to interpret the term by its descriptive equivalent," the rapid river."

The most ancient form of the vocable "Ap," is the Vedic "Apna;" the Greek variants of "op" and "opus," are borrowed from the former, as in the towns of Opus and Or-opus. It is on the shores of the lake Trichonis, in Ætolia, that the ancient relic of the purer Sanscrit term is to be found in the name of the city "Met-apa,' an anteHellenic compound equivalent to Meth-udrium, for the reader will not fail to remark, that all the numerous variants are in connexion with this root. Again, Trikka is a name descriptive of a current or stream.§ Hence " Tricca," or the stream town, built upon the Lethæus, a tributary of the Thessalian Peneus.

* Ασ-ῶπος.

† Northern Greece, Vol. ii. p. 445. Vide also Thucyd. ii. 5, where its sudden rise is noticed.

It is from the Arian root "Ap" that the Celtic has found the verb "İbh-im, drink, and Abh, a river.

{Variant of the Hellenic rрéxw: root the Sansc. Trak and Trakh, to go, to

move.

ART. III.-The Physical Geography of the Sea. By M. F. MAURY, LL.D., Lieut. U.S. Navy. Second Edition. 1855.

ON the twenty-third of August, 1853, an event of deep interest to the thoughtful observer of scientific progress, occurred at Brussels. A conference of representatives met there from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Holland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and the United States. This conference recommended a system of marine research, which is destined, we trust, to bring up treasures from the ocean of truth, more precious than all the wealth that lies buried beneath the waters of the sea. Austria, Brazil, the Republics of Bremen and Chili, the free city of Hamburg, Prussia, and Spain, have also offered themselves as members of this scientific guild; and ere this fresh adherents may have sent in their names. In peace and in war these observations are to proceed uninterrupted, and should any of the vessels conducting them be captured, the journals in which they are recorded are to be held neutral. That compartment of the cabinet of science, in which our treasures of marine investigation are deposited, is labelled "Physical Geography of the Sea." We now propose to reach out some of its specimens, and to hold them up before the reader.

We shall start from the root of our subject. Until the plan of deep-sea sounding was commenced, as now conducted in the American navy, the bottom of what the sailors call "blue water," was utterly unknown to us. All attempts made on the supposition that when the lead grounds, either a shock will be felt, or that the line becoming slack will cease to run out, are based on a sandy hypothesis. Indeed we feel doubtful now, whether any accurate mode of sounding deep water has been discovered. But by a beautifully simple contrivance, which detaches the sounding-shot from the line, we can obtain bottom specimens from apparently any depth. The most ingenious schemes for deep-sea soundings have been devised. By exploding heavy powdercharges in the deep sea when all was still, the echo from the bottom might, it was thought, be heard, and the depth determined from the pace at which sound swims through water. But though the explosion went off many feet below the surface, the silent earth whispered nothing. Deep-sea leads with a column of air in them have been devised, and the plan succeded for ordinary cases, but in the "blue

water" abyss where the pressure would be equal to several hundred atmospheres, this scheme broke down. Lieutenant Maury contrived an apparatus which behaved admirably in moderate depths; but it failed in blue water, from the difficulty of hauling it up if the line used was small, and that of getting it down if the line was large enough to give strength for hauling it up. Science will yet, we trust, give us a clear solution of this problem, if it should be found that we have at present an approximation only.

The basin of the Atlantic is a long trough, furrowed probably from pole to pole, and from the top of Chimborazo to the deepest spot yet touched by the plummet in the North Atlantic, the vertical distance is nine miles. There is a remarkable steppe between Cape Race, in Newfoundland, and Cape Clear, in Ireland, which is known as the telegraphic plateau. From this interesting field, the deep-sea sounding apparatus gathered its first specimens. They were sent to Professors Ehrenberg and Bailey, and the latter writes:—

"I am greatly obliged to you for the deep soundings you sent me last week, and I have looked at them with great interest. They are exactly what I have wanted to get hold of. The bottom of the ocean at the depth of more than two miles, I hardly hoped ever to have a chance of examining; yet, thanks to Brooke's contrivance, we have it clean and free from grease, so that it can at once be put under the microscope. I was greatly delighted to find that all these deep soundings are filled with microscopic shells; not a particle of sand or gravel exists in them. They are chiefly made up of perfect little calcareous shells (Foraminifera), and contain, also, a small number of silicious shells (Diatomace).

"It is not probable that these animals lived at the depths where these shells are found, but I rather think that they inhabit the waters near the surface; and when they die, their shells settle to the bottom. With reference to this point, I shall be very glad to examine bottles of water from various depths, which were brought home by the Dolphin, and any similar materials, either bottom,' or water from other localities."

And now mark what a cunning use philosophy makes of facts, just as a single nugget might disclose the existence of a gold field. The microscopist could not detect an atom of sand or gravel amidst these tiny shells from the great telegraphic plateau, so it is inferred that here, if ever, the waters of the sea are tranquil :

"There was not motion enough there to abrade these very delicate organisms, nor current enough to sweep them about and mix them up with a grain of the finest sand, nor the smallest particle of gravel torn from the loose beds of debris that here and

THE TELEGRAPHIC PLATEAU.

79

This plateau is not too deep for

there strew the bottom of the sea. the wire to sink down and rest upon, yet it is not so shallow that currents, or icebergs, or any abrading force, can derange the wire after it is once lodged."

One might reverently fancy-if our hopes obtain a stable foundation on this plateau-that it was designed by God to be a thought-medium between the Old World and the New. Nor is this all:

"It is now suggested that, henceforward, we shall view the surface of the sea as a nursery teeming with nascent organisms, its depths as the cemetery for families of living creatures that outnumber the sands on the sea-shore for multitude.

"Where there is a nursery, hard by there will be found also a grave-yard-such is the condition of the animal world. But it never occurred to us before to consider the surface of the sea as one wide nursery, its very ripple a cradle, and its bottom one vast burialplace.

"On those parts of the solid portions of the earth's crust which are at the bottom of the atmosphere, various agents are at work, levelling both upwards and downwards. Heat and cold, rain and sunshine, the winds and the streams, all assisted by the forces of gravitation, are unceasingly wasting away the high places on the land, and as perpetually filling up the low.

"But in contemplating the levelling agencies that are at work upon the solid portions of the crust of our planet which are at the bottom of the sea, one is led, at first thought, almost to the conclusion that these levelling agents are powerless there.

"In the deep sea there are no abrading processes at work; neither frosts nor rains are felt there, and the force of gravitation is so paralyzed down there, that it cannot use half its power, as on the dry land, in tearing the overhanging rock from the precipice, and casting it down into the valley below.

"When considering the bottom of the ocean, we have, in the imagination, been disposed to regard the waters of the sea as a great cushion, placed between the air and the bottom of the ocean, to protect and defend it from these abrading agencies of the atmosphere.

"The geological clock may, we thought, strike new periods; its hands may point to era after era; but, so long as the ocean remains in its basin, so long as its bottom is covered with blue water, so long must the deep furrows and strong contrasts in the solid crust below stand out bold, ragged, and grand. Nothing can fill up the hollows there; no agent now at work, that we know of, can descend into its depths, and level off the floors of the sea.

"But it now seems that we forgot these oceans of animalculæ, that make the surface of the sea sparkle and glow with life. They are secreting from its surface solid matter for the very purpose of filling up those cavities below. These little marine insects are building their habitations at the surface, and when they die, their