the surface of the earth.

_Opinions of Aristotle._--From the works now extant of Aristotle, and
from the system of Pythagoras, as above exposed, we might certainly
infer that these philosophers considered the agents of change now
operating in nature, as capable of bringing about in the lapse of ages a
complete revolution; and the Stagyrite even considers occasional
catastrophes, happening at distant intervals of time, as part of the
regular and ordinary course of nature. The deluge of Deucalion, he says,
affected Greece only, and principally the part called Hellas, and it
arose from great inundations of rivers, during a rainy winter. But such
extraordinary winters, he says, though after a certain period they
return, do not always revisit the same places.[20]

Censorinus quotes it as Aristotle's opinion that there were general
inundations of the globe, and that they alternated with conflagrations;
and that the flood constituted the winter of the great year, or
astronomical cycle, while the conflagration, or destruction by fire, is
the summer, or period of greatest heat.[21] If this passage, as Lipsius
supposes, be an amplification, by Censorinus, of what is written in "the
Meteorics," it is a gross misrepresentation of the doctrine of the
Stagyrite, for the general bearing of his reasoning in that treatise
tends clearly in an opposite direction. He refers to many examples of
changes now constantly going on, and insists emphatically on the great
results which they must produce in the lapse of ages. He instances
particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at
length become watered by rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth
of the Nilotic Delta since the time of Homer, to the shallowing of the
Palus Maeotis within sixty years from his own time; and although, in the
same chapter he says nothing of earthquakes, yet in others of the same
treatise he shows himself not unacquainted with their effects.[22] He
alludes, for example, to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands
previous to a volcanic eruption. "The changes of the earth," he says,
"are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are
overlooked ([Greek: lanthanei]): and the migrations of people after
great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event
to be forgotten."[23]

When we consider the acquaintance displayed by Aristotle, in his
various works, with the destroying and renovating powers of Na