lion's skin and a club; and from the nature of many of his exploits, the
destruction of wild beasts and robbers. This part of the history of
Hercules seems to have related to times before the invention of the bow
and arrow, or of spinning flax. Other stories of Hercules are perhaps of
later date, and appear to be allegorical, as his conquering the river-
god Achilous, and bringing Cerberus up to day light; the former might
refer to his turning the course of a river, and draining a morass, and
the latter to his exposing a part of the superstition of the times. The
strangling the lion and tearing his jaws asunder, are described from a
statue in the Museum Florentinum, and from an antique gem; and the
grasping Anteus to death in his arms as he lifts him from the earth, is
described from another antient cameo. The famous pillars of Hercules
have been variously explained. Pliny asserts that the natives of Spain
and of Africa believed that the mountains of Abyla and Calpe on each
side of the straits of Gibraltar were the pillars of Hercules; and that
they were reared by the hands of that god, and the sea admitted between
them. Plin. Hist. Nat. p. 46. Edit. Manut. Venet. 1609.

If the passage between the two continents was opened by an earthquake in
antient times, as this allegorical story would seem to countenance,
there must have been an immense current of water at first run into the
Mediterranean from the Atlantic; since there is at present a strong
stream sets always from thence into the Mediterranean. Whatever may be
the cause, which now constantly operates, so as to make the surface of
the Mediterranean lower than that of the Atlantic, it must have kept it
very much lower before a passage for the water through the streights was
opened. It is probable before such an event took place, the coasts and
islands of the Mediterranean extended much further into that sea, and
were then for a great extent of country, destroyed by the floods
occasioned by the new rise of water, and have since remained beneath the