unchallenged till the beginning of the 18th century. (2) The philosophical
colouring of the first chapter and the numerous quotations
from Plato are in accordance with what is known of his philosophical
opinions. (3) The treatise is the kind of work to be expected from
one who was styled “the first of critics.” (4) The Ammonius referred
to (xiii. 3) is supposed to be Ammonius Saccas (c. 175–242), but it
appears from the Venetian scholia to the Iliad that there was an
earlier Ammonius (fl. c. 140 B.C.), a pupil and successor of Aristarchus
at Alexandria, who, judging from the context, is no doubt the writer
in question. The reference is therefore an argument against
Longinus.
The work is dedicated to a certain Terentianus, of whom nothing is known (see Roberts’s edition, p. 18).
The alternative author Dionysius of the MSS. has been variously identified with the rhetorician and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Atticist Aelius Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dionysius Atticus of Pergamum, Dionysius of Miletus. Other suggested claimants to the authorship are Plutarch (L. Vaucher in Études critiques sur le traité du sublime (Geneva, 1854) and Aelius Theon of Alexandria (W. Christ), the author of a work on the Arrangement of Speech. But it seems most probable that the author was an unknown writer who flourished in the 1st century soon after Caecilius and before Hermogenes. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff gives his date as about A.D. 40.
The rendering On the Sublime implies more than is intended by the Greek Περὶ ὕψους (“impressiveness in style,” Jebb). Nothing abnormal, such as is associated with the word “sublime,” is the subject of discussion; it is rather a treatise on style. According to the author’s own definitions, “Sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression,” “sublimity consists in elevation,” “sublimity is the echo (or expression) of a great soul” (see note in Roberts).
The treatise is especially valuable for the numerous quotations from classical authors, above all, for the preservation of the famous fragment of Sappho, the ode to Anactoria, beginning
imitated by Catullus (li.) Ad Lesbiam,
“Ille mi par esse deo videtur.”
“Its main object is to point out the essential elements of an impressive style which, avoiding all tumidity, puerility, affectation and bad taste, finds its inspiration in grandeur of thought and intensity of feeling, and its expression in nobility of diction and in skilfully ordered composition” (Sandys).
A full bibliography of the subject will be found in the edition by W. R. Roberts (Cambridge, 2nd ed., 1907), containing an Introduction, Analysis, Translation and Appendices (textual, linguistic, literary and bibliographical), to which may be added F. Marx, Wiener Studien, xx. (1898), and F. Kaibel, Hermes, xxxiv. (1899), who respectively advocate and reject the claims of Longinus to the authorship; J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906), pp. 288, 338, should also be consulted. The number of translations in all the languages of Europe is large, including the famous one by Boileau, which made the work a favourite text-book of the bellelettristic critics of the 18th century. A text and translation was published by A. O. Prickard (1907–1908).
LONG ISLAND, an island, 118 m. long and 12 to 23 m. wide, with its axis E.N.E. and W.S.W., roughly parallel with the S. shore of Connecticut, U.S.A., from which it is separated by Long Island Sound (115 m. long and 20-25 m. wide) and lying S.E. of the mainland of New York state, of which it is a part, and immediately E. of Manhattan Island. Area, 1682 sq. m. The east end is divided into two narrow peninsulas (the northern culminating in Orient Point about 25 m. long, the southern ending in Montauk Point, the eastern extremity of the island, about 40 m. long) by the three bays, Great Peconic, Little Peconic (in which lies Shelter Island) and Gardiners (in which lies Gardiners Island). The N. shore is broken in its western half by the fjords of Flushing Bay, Little Neck Bay, Manhasset Bay, Cold Spring Harbor; Huntington Bay (nearly landlocked), Smithtown Bay and Port Jefferson Harbor, which also is nearly landlocked. East of Port Jefferson the N. shore is comparatively unbroken. The S. shore has two bays, Jamaica Bay with many low islands and nearly cut off from the ocean by the narrow spur of Rockaway Beach; and the ill-defined Great South Bay, which is separated from the Atlantic by the narrow Long Beach, Jones Beach and Oak Island Beach, and by the long peninsula (35 or 40 m.), called Fire Island or Great South Beach. Still farther E. and immediately S. of Great Peconic Bay is Shinnecock Bay, about 10 m. long and cut off from the ocean by a narrow beach.
The N. side of the island was largely built by deposits along the front of the continental glacier, and its peculiar surface is due to such deposits. At Astoria the dark gneiss bed rock is visible. The S. half of the island is mostly built of a light sandy or loamy soil and is low, except for the hills (140-195 ft.) of Montauk peninsula, which are a part of the “back-bone” of the island elsewhere running through the centre from E. to W. and reaching its highest point in its western extremity, Oakley’s High Hill (384 ft.) and Hempstead Harbor Hill, W. of which are the flat and fertile Hempstead Plains. North of the back-bone or central ridge the country is hilly with glacial drift and many boulders along the coast and with soil stonier and more fertile than that of the “South Side.” There is good clay at Whitestone and at Lloyd’s Point on the north side. This north shore is comparatively well wooded; the middle of the island is covered with stunted oaks and scrubby pines; the south side is a floral mean between the other divisions. It is cut in its middle part by a few creeks and tidal rivers[1] flowing into the Great South Bay. Another “river,” the Peconic, about 15 m. long, runs E. into Peconic Bay. On the north side there are few waterways save Nissequoge river, partly tidal, which runs N. into Smithtown Bay. Near the centre of the island is Lake Ronkonkoma, which is well below the level of the surrounding country, and whose deep cold waters with their unexplained ebb and flow are said to have been so feared by the Indians that they would not fish there. There are salt marshes (probably 100 sq. m. in all) on the shore of the Sound and of the Great South Bay.
As regards its fauna Long Island is a meeting-place for equatorial and arctic species of birds and fish; in winter it is visited occasionally by the auk and in summer sometimes by the turkey buzzard. James E. DeKay in his botanical and zoological survey (1842–1849) of New York state estimated that on Long Island there were representatives of two-thirds of the species of land birds of the United States and seven-eighths of the water birds—probably an exaggerated estimate for the time and certainly not true now. There is snipe and duck shooting, especially on the shores of the Great South Bay; there is good deer hunting, especially in Islip town; and there are several private preserves, some stocked with English game birds, within 50 m. of New York City. There are many excellent trout streams and the island was known in aboriginal times for its fresh and salt water fish. Indian names referring to fishing places are discussed in Wm. W. Tooker’s Some Indian Fishing Stations upon Long Island. Long Island wampum was singularly good—the Indian name, Seawanhacky (Seawanhaka, &c.), of the island has been interpreted to mean “shell treasury”—and black wampum was made from the purple part of the shell of the quahaug. Soft clams are dug on the north shore at low tide and hard clams are found along the southern shore, where (at Islip) they were first successfully canned; scallops and other small shell fish are taken, especially at the E. end of the island. But the most important shell fishery is that of oysters. The famous Blue Points grow in the Great South Bay, particularly at Sayville and Bellport, where seed oysters planted from Long Island Sound develop into the Blue Points with characteristics of no other variety of oyster. Farther west, on the S. shore are grown the well-known Rockaway oysters. The New York State Fish Commission has a hatchery at Cold Spring Harbor on the N. shore. The largest commercial fisheries are on the south side, in the ocean off Fire Island Beach, where there are great “pounds” in which captured fish are kept alive before shipment to market. Sag Harbor and East Hampton on the E. end of the island were important whaling ports in the 18th century and the first part of the 19th, and they and other fishing villages afterward did a large business in the capture of menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus), a small shad-like fish, which, following the custom of the Indians, they manufactured into fertilizer. At Glen Cove there are now great starch factories.
The west end of the island has been called New York’s market garden. On the Hempstead Plains and immediately E. of them along the north shore great quantities of cabbage and cucumbers are grown and manufactured into sauerkraut and pickles. There are large cranberry fields near the village of Calverton, immediately W. of Riverhead.
There are a few large farms on Long Island, mostly on the north side, but it is becoming more and more a place of suburban residence. This change is due in part to cool summer and warm winter winds from the ocean, which makes the July mean temperature 68° to 70° F. at the east end and the south side, and 72° on the north shore, as contrasted with 74° for the west end and New York City. The range of temperature is said to be less than in any other place in the United States with the exception of Corpus Christi (Tex.), Eureka (California), Galveston (Texas), and Key West (Florida). Even on the south shore the humidity for August and September is less than that of any location on the Atlantic coast, or Los Angeles and San Diego on the Pacific, according to Dr Le Grand N. Denslow in a paper, “The Climate of Long Island” (1901). Surf-bathing on the south shore,
- ↑ G. K. Gilbert, in an article, “The Deflection of Streams” in the American Journal of Science (xxvii. 427-432), points out that each of these streams is “bounded on the west or right side by a bluff 10 to 20 ft. high.”
