[ 40 j 



VI. On the Geological Evidence of the Advance of the Land 

 at the Head of the Persian Gulf By Charles T. Beke, 

 Esq., F.S.A. 



To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal. 



Gentlemen, 



HAVE now to trouble you with the following observa- 

 T tions on the Geological evidence of the advance of the land 

 at the head of the Persian Gulf, which you will oblige me by 

 inserting in the next Number of the Philosophical Magazine, 

 as a continuation of my paper on the Historical evidence on 

 the same subject contained in the number of that Magazine 

 this day published*. 



Almost eighteen centuries have now elapsed since it was 

 remarked by Pliny, in the passage which I have already cited f, 

 that " in no part of the world did the land advance so greatly 

 or so rapidly upon the sea" as at the head of the Persian 

 Gulf. In making this observation that ardent and careful in- 

 vestigator of the phaenomena of nature at the same time ex- 

 pressed his wonder (to use Mr. LyelPs paraphrastic transla- 

 tion %i) "that the fluviatile matter was not swept away by the 

 tide which penetrated far above the tracts where great acces- 

 sions were made. This remark" (Mr. Lyell proceeds to say,) 

 " proves that he had considered the different condition of 

 rivers in inland seas, and those discharging their waters into 

 the ocean." I may add that it proves even more evidently 

 that the subject of the growth of land at the mouths of rivers 

 was entirely familar to the natural historian, who (it is to be 

 remembered,) was a native of Verona, a city at a short di- 

 stance only from the shores of the Adriatic, and who, in the 

 course of his active life, visited various countries bordering 

 upon the Mediterranean — than which " no other inland sea 

 affords so many examples of accessions of new lands at the 

 mouths of rivers within the records of authentic history §" — 



* Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. vi. p. 401. 



f Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag. for February 1834, vol. iv. p. 109; and 

 Origines Biblic<z,p. 21. " Nee ulla in parte plus aut celerius profecere 

 terras fluminibus invectae. Magis id mirum est, aestu longe ultra id acce- 

 dente, non repercussas." Hist. Nat. lib. vi. cap. xxvii. 



I Principles of Geology, first edition, vol. i. p. 291. The passage here 

 cited is repeated by the author in the second edition of his work, vol. i. 

 n. 332; but in the third edition, published in August 1834, the paragraph 

 in which it is contained, together with the above quotation from Pliny, 

 which is also given in the former editions, are omitted, without any cause 

 being assigned by the author for their suppression. 



§ Principles of Geology, vol. i. p. 231 ; first edition. 



