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30 ATLANTIS ing one of the Canary Islands. Later the map of the Pizigani brothers of 1367 25 (Fig. 2) contains in words and a saintly figure of warning a solemn protest against attempting to sail the unnavi- gable ocean tract beyond the Azores. As will be seen by a modern map (Fig. i), this area includes the vast realm of the Sargasso a waste of weed, shifting its borders with the seasons but constant in its characteristics in some parts and always to be found by little seeking one of the permanent conspicuous features of earth's surface. 26 It is described by a writer in the Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica as nearly equal to Europe in area, a statement hardly warranted unless by including all outlying tatters and fringes of Gulf weed floating free. 27 It is one of the topics that tempt and have always tempted ex- aggeration and misunderstandings. The effect on a bright mind of current nautical yarns concerning it is shown by Janvier's "In the Sargasso Sea," a narrative almost as extravagant as Plato's tale of Atlantis, in its own quite different way. One of the more moderate preliminary passages may be cited : And to that same place, he added, the stream carried all that was caught in its current like the spar and plank floating near us, so that the sea was covered with a thick tangle of the weed in which were held fast fragments of wreckage and stuff washed overboard and logs adrift from far southern shores, until in its central part the mass was so dense that no ship could sail through it nor could a steamer traverse it because of the fouling of her screws. 25 [E. F.] Jomard: Les monuments de la geographic, ou recueil d'anciennes cartes europeennes et orientates . . . , Paris, [1842-62], PI. X, i. 26 J. C. Soley: Circulation of the North Atlantic in February and in August [sheet of text with charts on the reverse]. Supplement to the Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean for 1912, Hydrographic Office, Washington, D. C. Otto Krummel: Die nordatlantische Sargassosee, Petermanns Mitt., Vol. 37, 1891, pp. 120-141, with map. Gerhard Schott: Geographic des Atlantischen Ozeans, Hamburg, 1912, pp. 162-164 and 268-269, Pis. 16 and 26. 27 Kriimmel (paper cited in footnote 26) suggests applying the name Sargasso Sea to the area limited by the curve of 5 per cent probability of occurrence on his map (our Fig. i). This area amounts to 4,500,000 square kilometers, or somewhat less than half the area of Europe. Schott (see footnote 26), p. 140, gives 8,635,000 square kilometers as the area of his natural region Sargasso Sea, which is based not only on the occurrence of gulfweed but also on the prevailing absence of currents and on the relatively high temperature of the water in all depths. EDIT. NOTE. 2* T. A. Janvier: In the Sargasso Sea, New York, 1896, p. 26.