44 Mr. Beke on the Geological Evidence of the Advance of 



was not merely sincere in his belief, but also perfectly correct 

 in his assertion that " in no part of the world* did the land 

 gain so rapidly upon the sea;" and consequently we cannot, 

 under any circumstances, be wrong in concluding that an ac- 

 cession of land very considerably greater than one thousand 

 square miles has actually taken place at the head of that gulf 

 within the last 2000 years. Hence it follows — and this is the 

 point for which I need now principally to contend, — that the 

 identifications of the various places mentioned by the ancients 

 (and in particular by Nearchus) at the mouths of the rivers 

 and along the coast at the head of the Persian Gulf, which 

 have been made by geographers of modern times, and espe- 

 cially by the late Dr. Vincent and Major Rennell, must neces- 

 sarily be erroneous f. 



It is beyond the scope of the present paper to attempt to 

 determine the correct positions of any of those places, or even 

 to institute an inquiry into what may have been the direction 

 of the coast line at the time when the voyage of Nearchus was 

 undertaken, or at any other period of past history. I will, 

 however, venture to offer the following suggestions, which may 

 not be unworthy of the consideration of those who at any fu- 

 ture period may feel inclined to devote their attention to the 

 subject. 



In the first place, then, it will be necessary to revert back 

 to the time — whenever that time may have been, — when the 

 Euphrates and Tigris discharged their waters into the Persian 

 Gulf by entirely distinct and separate channels, each possess- 

 ing its independent delta, as was formerly the case with the 

 Po and Adige, the Ganges and Brahmapootra, and the Red 

 River and Mississippi $. 



* This assertion is of course to be understood with reference to those 

 portions only of the globe which were actually known in those times; for 

 the growth of the land in the Persian Gulf will not bear comparison with 

 that which takes place at the mouths of the great rivers of the New World, 

 or even of Eastern Asia. It would be an interesting subject of research to 

 investigate the changes which have taken place at the mouths of the Indus 

 since that river was visited by Nearchus. 



-f- Mr. Carter, in his paper in the Philosophical Magazine (present series, 

 vol. v. p. 248.) before alluded to, relies upon the extraordinary and (as it 

 would appear) unfounded opinion asserted by Dean Vincent that Captain 

 Howe's chart " explains the journal of Nearchus as perfectly as if it had 

 been composed by a person on board of his fleet;" (Commerce and Navi- 

 gation of the Ancients, vol. i. p. 423;) and that " the pilot on board Near- 

 chus's ship steered exactly the same course" {along the coast of the Delta) 



" as MacCluer's Karack j)ilot, 2000 years afterwards" (ibid. p. 466). 



logy, vol. i. 

 tioned in Orig. Bibl., p. 19, Mr. Lyell observes that " the union of the 



X See Principles of Geology, vol. i. 252, first edition. As I have men- 



Tigris and Euphrates must undoubtedly have been one of the modern geo- 

 graphical changes on our earth." 



