326 Dr R. J. Graves on the 



comes necessary to show that recently ascertained facts are 

 quite opposed to the truth of this opinion. 



Recent writers and travellers have not failed to fall in with 

 and confirm the popular prejudice on this subject — thus, Mr 

 Warburton calls the Dead Sea a corpse, and says with much 

 emphasis, " There was no shell, or fly, or any sign of life 

 along the curving strand, which rose steeply to the water's 

 edge, and consisted of very small and angular pebbles.'' Dr 

 Robinson, and the author of Eothen, both indulge in reflec- 

 tions respecting the absence of life, not only from the waters 

 of the Dead Sea, but from the air above, and the shores sur- 

 rounding it. We find also Lieut. Lynch bearing similar tes- 

 timony : thus at page 311 he states, " No bird fanned with 

 its wing the attenuated air, through which the sun poured 

 its scorching rays upon the mysterious element on which we 

 floated, and which alone of all the works of its Maker, con- 

 tains no living thing within it.*"* 



This passage, I must confess, strikes me as being more 

 poetical than philosophical, for, in the first place, no fact 

 recorded by either Mr Lynch or others justifies the epithet 

 attenuated being applied to the air ; and, in the second place, 

 Mr Lynch seems to forget that he himself several times met 

 with birds both resting on the waters of the Dead Sea, and fly- 

 ing over it. Thus in one part of his Journal we find the fol- 

 lowing entry, page 287 : — " One of the party shot at a duck, 

 a short distance from the shore — dark-grey body, and black 

 head and wings. This was fully twelve miles from the 

 Jordan. The bird, when fired at, flew but a short distance 

 out to sea, where it alighted, and again directed its course 

 towards the shore. We therefore inferred that its haunt 

 was among the sedges of the little fountain." 



I have no doubt that the reader will partake somewhat of 

 the astonishment which I felt on discovering that the facts re- 

 corded by Mr Lynch (for the observation of which he deserves 

 so much credit) are quite at variance with his general con- 

 clusion, as to absence of birds from the Dead Sea and its 

 shores. Thus at pages 274 and 279 the following occurrences 

 are detailed : — 



" Started two partridges of a beautiful stone colour, so much like 



