in Reply to Mr. Beke. 251 



I have before noticed, that to make the theory of the great 

 delta and its increase of 245 miles since 325 b. c, at all coin- 

 cide with the entire relation given by Pliny, we must admit 

 the extravagant hypothesis, that the rivers had since Pliny's 

 time separated, and then again united, and added a territory 

 of some 200 miles to its length; or if we are not to suppose 

 these mighty changes, but (dismissing the great delta to the 

 winds) an increase of 70 or 35 miles only is to be inferred 

 from the measurements to Charax, even that increase, so de- 

 duced, is negatived by the fact that these distances to Charax 

 would actually make many more miles of country at the head 

 of the gulf than are to be found there even at the present 

 day*. It is, then, manifest that no dependence can be placed 

 on them. It is the more evident that Pliny could have arrived 

 at no greater certainty in respect of them than of the further 

 distance on to Babylon, and that his inference from the for- 

 mer, that the rivers had added to the land, must, if indeed 

 authentic, be taken subject to all the uncertainty he complains 

 of in his data for the latter. This inference, however, with 

 the expression of great surprise which follows it that the tide 

 did not carry away what the rivers had brought down, is 

 again adduced as a highly important authority in the last 

 paper, and one is astonished at the amount of evidence which 

 this single expression is supposed to concentrate. We are 

 told that " it proves more evidently, that the subject of the 

 growth of land at the mouths of rivers was entirely familiar 

 with the natural historian, who was a native of Verona," 

 (which remains a question,) " a city at a short distance only 

 from the shores of the Adriatic," (it is about 60 miles distant,) 

 " ... and it further demonstrates that special attention had 

 been devoted by him to the particular 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 conse- 

 quence of the absence of tides within the MediteiTanean" 



Now, as Pliny appears in the questionable passage here re- 

 ferred to, to express much surprise that the tide did not carry 

 away whatever the rivers had deposited, in fact, that any ad- 



* There is a strong mark in this locality, which I should before have 

 named. Pliny (lib. vi. cap. 28.) notices a place where once was the mouth of 

 theEuphrates, plainly pointing to that singular inlet of the sea at the south- 

 west of the Mesopotamian delta now called the Khore Abdallah, which 

 seems to have been one of its ancient branch streams (still, says Dr. Vin- 

 cent, called in the country its mouth,) now stopped up, at its head. Here, 

 then, is another of those nice points of identity which we are to ima- 

 gine the rivers in their vagrant transmutations to have accurately replaced 

 since he wrote. 



2K 2 



