HeugUn's " Reise Nach Abessviien''^ 149 



reader's feet just as it has been accumulated. There is " a deal 

 of fine confused feeding" in it, but the picking, the plucking, and 

 the cooking are all left to the reader's self These lists of the 

 species collected at the different places would be nearly as instruc- 

 tive as, and in truth the narrative, so far it relates to natural history, 

 is in many respects little more than, a succession of lists, except 

 that, in printers' language, they " run on," and are lightened by 

 slight characteristic epithets, such as " the blue-flowered myosotis," 

 " the bitter-tasted cardamine," the " rich-blooming trifolium," &c. 

 The materials thus collected, however, are sometimes very sugges- 

 tive, and lead to important inferences regarding the past history of 

 the region. Thus, for example, Heuglin examined one or more of 

 the uninhabited islands of the Dahlakian archipelago opposite 

 Massowah, and in a list of the birds and mammals observed at one 

 of them (Sarat), mentions the jackal, the hyena, the wild ass, and 

 the Antelope Soemmeringii. How came they there ? They cannot 

 have swam from the mainland, for Sarat and the Dahlak archi- 

 pelago are by the map some twenty miles distant from the main- 

 land, and it may be taken for granted that no jackal, hyena, wild 

 ass, or antelope ever swam twenty miles ; or if we go to the extreme 

 of possibility, and suppose that it is not absolutely impossible that 

 in extremity one of them may have done so, we imagine no one will 

 maintain that herds or else single gravid females of all four species 

 had made their way out to this small island without compulsion 

 or without attraction. It seems equally clear that they cannot be 

 there through the introduction of man. It might, indeed, be argued 

 that the wild ass may be a descendant of the common ass, left 

 there by man, which had reverted to the original type. But 

 putting out of view the fact that the island is uninhabited, this 

 would not apply to the hyena, the jackal, or the antelope. There 

 seems, therefore, no escape from the conclusion, that at some 

 former period these islands were united to the mainland, and by a 

 depression of the bed of the Red Sea have been severed from 

 the mainland where those same animals are common. In the same 

 way the opposite coast of Arabia is peopled by these very animals, 

 and it is scarcely logical to suppose that there was a depression of 

 the ground between the Dahlak islands and Abyssinia, and yet none 

 between these islands and Arabia. It appears indeed, from the 

 antient Port of Zullah being now two miles from the shore, and 

 other facts of a similar nature, such as the extension of the land at 

 the head of the Persian Gulf, that this action is now reversed. 



