s out between the nineteenth and
thirty-fourth degrees of north latitude. Its chief axis lies about seven
degrees to the westward of the Island of Corvo. The smaller bank, on the
other hand, lies between the Bermudas and Bahamas. The winds and partial
currents in different years slightly affect the position and extent of
these Atlantic "sea-weed meadows." No other sea in either hemisphere
displays a similar extent of surface covered by plants collected in this
way. These meadows of the ocean present the wonderful spectacle of a
collection of plants covering a space nearly seven times as large as
France.--Humboldt's _Cosmos_.]

[Footnote 9: See Appendix, No. II. (see Vol II)]

[Footnote 10: See Aristotle, _De Mirab. Auscult._, cap. lxxxiv., 84, p.
836, Bekk. This work, "A Collection of Wonderful Narratives," is
attributed to Aristotle; the real compiler is unknown. According to
Humboldt, it seems to have been written before the first Punic
war.--Diodorus of Sicily, vol. xix. Aristotle attributes the discovery
of the island to the Carthaginians; Diodorus to the Phoenicians. The
occurrence is said to have taken place in the earliest times of the
Tyrrhenian dominion of the sea, during the contest between the
Tyrrhenian Pelasgi and the Phoenicians. The Island of the Seven Cities
(see Appendix, No. II.) was identified with the island mentioned by
Aristotle as having been discovered by the Carthaginians, and was
inserted in the early maps under the name of Antilla. Paul Toscanelli,
the celebrated physician of Florence, thus writes to Columbus: "From the
Island of Antilia, which you call the Seven Cities, and of which you
have some knowledge," &c. In the Middle Ages conjectures were
religiously inscribed upon the maps, as is proved by Antilia, St.
Borondon (see Appendix), the Hand of Satan, Green Island, Maida Island,
and the exact form of vast southern regions. Humboldt refers the name of
Antilia so far back as the fourteenth century. The earliest date given
by Ferdinand Columbus is 1436. "Beyond the Azores, but at no great
distance toward the west, occurs the Ysola de Antilia, which we may
conclude, even allowing the date of the map to be genuine (in the
library of St. Mark, at Venice, date 1436), to be a mere gratuitous or
theoretic supposition, and to have received that strange name because
the obvious and natural idea of antipodes has been anathematized by
Catholic ignorance." He elsewhere says that "some Portuguese
cosm