Mr. Beke on the Persian Gulf. 41 



and it further demonstrates that special attention had been 

 devoted by him to the particular subject of the changes at the 

 head of the Persian Gulf, since he pointedly contrasts what 

 he conceives ought to have been the effect of the tide there, 

 with the consequences of the absence of tides within the Medi- 

 terranean. 



From the examination, therefore, of what is ascertained to 

 have occurred at the mouths of the principal rivers flowing 

 into this latter sea, resulting from the continuation of the pro- 

 cess which was going on in Pliny's time and to his knowledge, 

 we shall obtain the best means of forming an approximate 

 idea of what also have been the actual changes at the mouths 

 of those rivers which discharge themselves into the Persian 

 Gulf. For the present means of this examination we are 

 greatly indebted to the talents and research of the accom- 

 plished President of the Geological Society. It is, in fact, 

 substantially effected in his able work to which I have so fre- 

 quently referred * ; and in citing that work once more as my 

 authority, I shall content myself with adducing the single in- 

 stance of the rapid formation of new lands at the mouths of the 

 Po and Adige, as being that with which Pliny himself may, 

 from the place of his birth, be presumed to have been better 

 acquainted than with any other. We learn, then, that " from 

 the northernmost point of the Gulf of Trieste, where the Isonzo 

 enters, down to the south of Ravenna, there is an uninter- 

 rupted series of accessions of land, more than one hundred 

 miles in length, which, within the last two thousand years, 

 have increased from two to twenty miles in breadth f ; that is to 

 say, a formation of new land has within that period taken 

 place, extending over an area of not less than one thousand 

 square miles. • Hence, even if we attach no importance what- 

 ever to Pliny's express reference to the extraordinarily rapid 

 growth of the land in the Persian Gulf, we may, at all events, 

 be permitted to calculate that during the same period the ac- 

 cession of new lands in that locality has at least been of equal 

 magnitude with that which has taken place within the Adriatic; 

 and if, further, we reckon that during the previous ages the 

 rate of increase was no greater than during the last two thou- 

 sand years, we shall have about 2300 square miles as the 

 amount of the new lands which have been formed by the al- 

 luvial deposits of the Tigris and Euphrates since the date of 

 the erection of the tower of Babel J. 



* Principles of Geology, vol. i. pp. 232—239 ; first edition, 

 f Ibid., p. 236 ; first edition. 



X According to Dr. Hales, the birth of Peleg, to which epoch I refer the 

 dispersion of mankind (see Orig. Bibl., p. 68), took place in the year 2745 

 TJiird Series. Vol. 7. No. 37. July 1835. G 



