ABSTRACT
The advantages common to the whole basin of the Mediterranean are concentrated in a pre-eminent degree· and assume an outstanding importance in the eastern section. The lEgean Sea marks the point where the basin of the sea branches north-east as the Bosphorus and the Euxine and south-east as the Levant, which in its turn leads on the one side to the Nile and the Red Sea and on the other towards the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. It is there that the three parts of the world washed by the Mediterranean come closest to one another and it is there that the nations have learnt to distinguish them. There Europe and Asia throw out towards each other, opposite to Africa, peninsulas barely separated by narrow sounds and almost united by archipelagos. There upheavals of the most violent character have produced the most chaotic jumble of depressions and heights, of marine trenches and rocky islands, of plains and mountains. There on lofty slopes the change from the dry heat of the South to the moist coolness of the North is most abrupt and the vegetation presents the greatest variety.
