either of more recent date or of especial interest in connection with the evolution of the topographical relief of the district. 1870. J. Croll, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin,, Vol, i, p. 342: "On two River Channels buried under Drift . . .' 1873. J. Henderson, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol, ii, p. 196: "On the evidence of the existence of an old River Course . at the Water of Leith, above Colinton." 1887. J. Henderson, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. v, p. 350: "On Sands and Gravels containing the Remains of Drifted Trees . 1893. H. M. Cadell, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. vi, p. 287: "A Map of the Ancient Lakes of Edinburgh." 1893. H. M. Cadell, Scot. Geog. Mag., Vol. ix, p. 302: "Some Ancient Land. marks of Midlothian." 1902. R. Richardson, Scot. Geog. Mag., Vol. xviii, p. 337: "The Physiography of Edinburgh." 1903. H. M. Cadell, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. viii, p. 194: "Note on the Buried River Channel of the Almond." 1908. R. Cochrane and B. N. Peach, Pentland Walks. 1909. A. C. Campbell and E. M. Anderson, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. ix, p. 219: "Notes on a Transported Mass of Igneous Rock at Comiston Sandpit. . ." 1911. J. Cossar, Scot. Geog. Mag., Vol. xxvii, pp. 574, 643: "Notes on the Geography of the Edinburgh District." 1912. J. Cossar, Scot. Geog. Mag., Vol. xxviii, p. 10. 1912. H. M. Cadell, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. the Forth Valley." 1913. H. M. Cadell, The Story of the Forth. See previous reference. x, p. 92: "The History of 1914. The Geologists' Association Handbook, "The Geology of the District around Edinburgh." 1923. D. Anderson, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. xi, p. 256: "Evidence of the Retreat of an Ice-Sheet to the South-East of Edinburgh.' 1923. D. Anderson, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. xi, p. 264: "Glacial Drainage Phenomena in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh." 1923. T. C. Day, Trans. Geol. Soc., Edin., Vol. xi, p. 266: "Note on the Dry Valley of Windy Gowl, Carlops.' CLIMATIC INFLUENCES IN SOME ANCIENT By Miss ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE, of Clark University, PRIMITIVE religions embody the first halting efforts of untutored man to explain the world about him. They slowly build up a mythology reflecting the aspects of nature in the homeland, and they create divine beings who represent the forces of nature operating to the benefit or detriment of man. It is geography, therefore, which furnishes the clay 1 Abstracted from a paper read before Section E at the Toronto Meeting of the British Association. out of which the nature gods are modelled, and geography supplies the vision by which the untrained sculptor works. If religions be studied in their native habitats, before they have been transplanted to new environments, and studied moreover in their native forms, before they have been seriously modified by imported ideas born of other environments, these religions are found to mirror that combination of earth and sea and sky which gave them birth. And if a group of such religions arises in a well-defined natural region which comprises common characteristics of climate and relief in its various component parts, these religions will reveal in their fundamental aspects a family likeness traceable to their common geographical parentage; they will be differentiated, one from the other, by local variations of place and race in each individual homeland and by their respective stage of evolution, but they will still remain true to the larger regional type. The Mediterranean Region presents a natural environment in which such a kindred group of religions arose. It is an extensive region of prevailing mountain or highland relief, of sub-tropical warmth, of typical Mediterranean climate with its winter rains and summer droughts, of short wet-weather torrents, of rivers which swell to flood proportions in winter and shrink in summer to slender brooks trickling down from some near-by mountain source. It is a region of typical Mediterranean vegetation, armed with drought-resisting qualities to weather the arid summer of the lowlands, but merging on the mountain slopes into the vegetation of rainier belts and higher altitudes, where deciduous trees, denser forests, and fresher shades of green register the effect of cloudy summits, August showers, and the ampler precipitation of the heights. It is a region where springs run dry in summer or yield meagre supplies of water, where unfailing wells and perennial fountains are accounted blessings; a region where in the dry days "the hart panteth for the water-brook" which has become transformed into a river of sand, where Pindar sang "Water is best of all," and where the modern Greek says to his departing guest, "May you have a safe journey and find good water." Mediterranean Climate. -The circle of the Mediterranean lands forms approximately a climatic unit. The amount of the annual rainfall and the length of the rainy season decrease from west to east and from north to south; while the duration and intensity of the summer drought increase in the same directions, and thus curtail the length of the growing season for the winter crops of grain and legumes. Deviations from this law occur only where high mountains take toll of moisture from the reluctant clouds, prolong the rainy days on their slopes, and break the summer drought by an occasional local thunderstorm. From midday on, their chilly summits are often enveloped in clouds, which seem to give delusive promises of rain to the sun-baked plains below. Moreover, from north to south and from west to east the showers which open and close the wet season, "the former and the latter rains" of the Bible, become more variable and unreliable. They appear late or fail altogether, thus lopping off either end of the growing season and reducing the total rainfall. Especially is this the case in the south-east, in Syria and Palestine, where the supply of water, scant at best, assumes crucial importance; where any diminution in the amount or duration of the rains seriously jeopardises the crops. Fluctuations in the annual rainfall are normal phenomena on the margin of the arid belt; they characterise alike southern California, the Cape Town district of Africa, and the Mediterranean Region. Modern records show that the rainfall at Jerusalem fluctuates between 12.5 and 42 inches; that during the sixty years from 1850 to 1910 it dropped twelve times below the critical 20 inches and twelve times exceeded 32 inches. Thus every five years, on an average, the rainfall on the Judean plateau is so much below the annual mean of 26 inches as to cause alarming reduction of the harvests. Moreover, a succession of these dry years tends to occur there, diminishing the reserves of moisture in the soil and lowering the ground-water table. During the period from 1869 to 1873 inclusive the annual rainfall averaged only a little over 17 inches. In Cyprus precipitation varies from 10 to 27 inches on the coasts, in Cyrenaica from 8.27 to 24.25 inches, in Athens from 45 to 33.3 inches, in Palermo from 22.8 to 39 inches, and in Rome from 25 to 45 inches. Ancient traditions and history agree with the modern meteorological records; the two together indicate stable climatic conditions from the earliest times to the present in the Mediterranean Region. Severe droughts, reported in history always as famines, were frequent in the arid eastern end of the region. Bible records, fragmentary as they are, show that the crops of ancient Palestine constantly suffered from insufficient rain. The famines in the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were clearly due to drought, because they were protracted, widespread, and attended by failure of the wild pastures as well as of the crops. Α series of dry years evidently caused the famine which lasted for the Biblical seven years in the time of Jacob; it necessitated importations of grain from Egypt, and resulted in emigration from Palestine to the delta region of the Nile. The famine in the time of the Judges mentioned in the Book of Ruth lasted several years, and was probably due to drought, though the cause is not stated. Possibly to this period belonged the famine in northern Syria, when Meneptah of Egypt, about 1322 B.C., sent grain by sea to the Hittites there. The three years' famine in King David's reign is ascribed by Josephus to a long drought. sent in punishment for sin. The sin being expiated, "God began to send rain at once, and to make the earth again bring forth fruit as usual, and to free it from the previous drought, so that the country of the Hebrews flourished again." A three years' drought "without rain or dew," attended by failure of springs and wells, pastures and crops, occurred in King Ahab's reign in the ninth century B.C., and ended with the dramatic competition of prayers for rain on the summit of Mount Carmel. Menander mentions this drought in his history of Ethbaal, King of Tyre and Sidon, and states that no rain fell in Phoenicia for twelve months. Another destructive drought visited Judea in the seventh century B.C. in the time of Josiah and Jeremiah, when fissures formed in the sunbaked earth and the wild animals perished for lack of water and grass, when "the showers have been withholden and there hath been no latter rain." This may have been the severe drought described by Joel, when a plague of locusts increased the ravages of the drought till the blessed rains came. Again, about 520 B.C. the Jews, returned from exile in Babylonia, found that "the heaven is stayed from dew and the earth is stayed from her fruit," when the drought destroyed the mountain pastures, grain-fields, vineyards, and olive harvests. A like visitation is recorded as lasting two years during the reign of Herod the Great, in 24 and 23 B.C.; wheat was imported from Egypt and distributed to the people of Palestine to the amount of 400,000 Attic medimni or 600,000 bushels, while 100,000 medimni or 150,000 bushels were sent to relieve northern Syria; for all the countries about suffered from the same drought. Palestine shared in the "great dearth throughout the world, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar," the wide extent of which indicates a meteorological cause. The price of wheat soared, and the distress in Jerusalem was relieved by the purchase of grain in Alexandria and of dried figs in Cyprus. Greece, though located farther north and west than Palestine, nevertheless suffered from numerous droughts in ancient times; all its large and important city-states were situated on the ill-watered eastern side of the peninsula, in the rain-shadow of the western mountains, where the rainfall was scant and variable, as it is to-day. The mean rainfall of Athens is variously given as 16 inches, 15 2 inches, and 13.2 inches. Hence severe droughts run through all Greek legendary history. occurred during the time of the mythical Erechtheus, and necessitated the importation of grain from Egypt; another visited all Hellas and the Peloponnesus in the time of King Aeacus of Aegina, and yet another caused a devastating famine in fertile Boeotia during the reign of the legendary king Athamas. The myth runs that the women had been induced by evil counsel to parch the seed-corn, unknown to their husbands, so that it failed to sprout. The islands of the Aegean suffered in the same way from thirst and famine,-Crete and Kos, and especially Thera, where seven rainless years in succession drove the people to colonise the Cyrene region of Africa, which lay beneath "a hole in the sky." In historical times the effect of the droughts became less disastrous, because the active maritime trade of the Greeks supplied imported food from the Nile valley or the Scythian plains for the famine districts. However, frequent records of famine in Greece point to the recurrent cause in a scant rainfall. A period of scarcity prevailed in Athens in 445 B.C., when no war was going on to interrupt the work of tillage; the city was relieved by a gift of 40,000 medimni (60,000 bushels) of wheat from the King of Egypt. Drought undoubtedly caused the great famine of the 105th Olympiad (about 360 B.C.) mentioned by Demos thenes, when Athens imported an unprecedented amount of grain from the Crimea. A great famine occurred in 325-324 B.C., when not only Greece but also "other regions suffered severely and Egypt to a lesser degree." In this case, a widespread drought happened to coincide with a "low Nile." Athens, unable to secure food from the Nile valley except at exorbitant rates, considered sending out a colony to Hadria in the Po valley for the purpose of establishing a grain centre there. The opposite coast of the Aegean Sea in Asia Minor normally received more rain (20 to 30 inches) than the Greek side, owing to its exposure to the rain-bearing winds; but this region too has its record of famines. A serious dearth prevailed over the whole of Lydia for several successive years in the mythical age of King Atys, and finally compelled the emigration of half the population, an exodus which, according to Herodotus, peopled ancient Etruria with Greco-Asiatics. The duration and extent of this famine are explicable only on the theory of a prolonged drought, like that which visited Lydia in the reign of Artaxerxes 1. (465 to 425 B.C.) and dried up every river, lake, and well of the country, as reported by the historian Xanthus. : Italy, owing to its more northern and more western location, was less subject than Greece to serious diminution of its rainfall, yet it did not wholly escape the evil. A famine in 490 B.C. was attributed by Livy to neglect of tillage caused by the secession of the plebs. But this strike of the peasants was only a momentary episode. Far more significant is the fact that the grain agents, sent out by the Roman Government to purchase food from the neighbouring tribes, were roughly handled and chased away by the Volscians and the people of the Pompetine plain that immediately afterwards a pestilence broke out among the Volscians, who were also apparently suffering from inadequate food and a low water supply; and that the grain purchased by the Roman agents farther south in Cumae in the Neapolitan district was held up there by the local tyrant and its export forbidden. These facts point to a widespread famine, due in all probability to drought. Grain was finally procured only from the north, from Etruria, where the rainfall was more reliable. Again, in 440 B.C. a great scarcity of food in Rome, "due either to a bad season for the crops or to neglect of tillage,' Livy writes, necessitated the importation of grain, which again could be procured only in Etruria. Failure to get it from other sources may have been due either to widespread drought or to the political rivalry and enmity of the neighbouring tribes; but the latter reason would not have applied to the distant Neapolitan district at this period of history. The year 425 B.C. in Latium was marked by a protracted drought. Rivers and springs dried up, crops failed, cattle lay dead from thirst along the exhausted streams, disease and famine followed. Such a drought with its manifold effects is described by Virgil in his Eclogues and Aeneid. One such visited Italy in 182 B.C., when for six months no rain fell. A widespread famine occurred in A.D. 5 and lasted for a year; it set in again in A.D. 7, and this time extended over Dalmatia |