Syrtis and Lake Triton are still united by a channel, which is 
already becoming more narrow, and the island of Phla, under the 
name of Triton, still exists. 
In the time of Pomponius Mela, two hundred years later still, 
or about the Christian era, the communication between the Lake 
and the Lesser Syrtis has already disappeared. The Lake Triton 
is beyond the Syrtis and inland; and travellers find, far removed 
from the sea, shells and pebbles*and other evidence of its recent 
existence. 
Then we come to the time of Ptolemy. The waters have 
continued to settle. They have definitely fixed themselves in the 
deeper depressions of the ancient bed. The primitive basin is 
sub-divided into several lakes, and Ptolemy places the embouchure 
of the river Triton at the point, where was the former means of 
communication. 
When to these ancient testimonies we add well-attested and 
wide-spread traditions among the Arabs and other races dwelling 
on the banks of the present Chotts, that these have had at one 
_ time communication with the sea, we can scarcely fail to identify 
| in them (the Chotts) the ancient Bay of Triton. 
The French government have had a series of levels run from 
__- Algiers and Bona to Biskra, and thence along the Chotts to the 
Gulf of Gabes. Captain Roudaire, the engineer employed, has 
reported most carefully upon the possibility and means of again 
_ Opening communication with the Mediterranean, and so re- 
_ producing a sea of some three hundred miles long and forty 
miles broad, and upon the consequences which the submersion of 
4 q the Chotts would produce on the climate and welfare of Algeria, 
and in a greater degree upon that of Tunis. 
These, without discussing the practicability of the reproduction 
BA of this ancient inland sea, we will consider, inasmuch as they will 
help us to realize the condition of things in this region in those 
_ ancient times, of which we have accounts so very inexplicable. 
r _ We have before us a phenomenon, which we know from geological 
* sources to have happened repeatedly in byegone ages—which has 
_ €yerywhere, and especially in some parts of our own country, left 
= a 
