252 EAST AFRICAN FLORA AND FA UNA part hi 



point farther north than the present end of the Gulf of Suez. 

 The account of the destruction of Pharaoh's host may possibly 

 be based on some catastrophe that happened owing to a change 

 in the relative levels of land and water in this district. But 

 the conclusion does not depend on the uncertainties of tradition. 

 Raised beaches containing marine shells of living species are 

 claimed to occur at a height three times as great as that of the 

 existing watershed, and must have been formed at a time when the 

 sea-level was higher than it is to-day. We are therefore con- 

 fronted by the probability that the two seas must have been in 

 communication in times geologically quite recent. So clear is 

 this evidence, indeed, that Professor Hull has issued a map 

 showing the two seas connected by a wide strait, at a time for 

 which he accepts the name of the Pluvial period. He accounts 

 for the divergence of the faunas by the assumption that they 

 could not have crossed owing to the shallowness and narrowness 

 of the water. But as a colony of Red Sea species, including 

 the Sea-Urchin {Heterocentrotus inammillatus, Brdt.), has worked 

 its way through the Suez Canal, which is only one-sixth of the 

 depth and one four-hundredth of the width of Professor Hull's 

 strait, this explanation seems quite insufficient. In order to 

 reconcile the apparent geological proof of the connection of the 

 two seas, and the zoological proof of their separation, we are 

 bound to accept Professor Suess's suggestion that, when the Red 

 Sea extended to the north, the Mediterranean lay much farther 

 to the west. The Levant must then have been a plain, over 

 which roamed herds of antelope and rhinoceros, and across 

 which ilowed rivers in which lived the hippopotami, whose 

 remains have long been known in the island of Crete. Suess 

 suggests that the great scaly dragon slain by one of the 

 Knights of St. John of Malta on the island of Rhodes may 

 have been a crocodile, for these reptiles still live in the Jordan 

 and in the Zerka (or " Crocodile River ") on the coast of 

 Palestine. That such traditions are of geological value has 

 been shown in the case of Samos ; for the stories of the 

 occurrence of great monsters there led Dr. Forsyth Major 

 to visit the island, and to make the famous collection, which 

 finally proved the former extension of the African fauna across 

 the Levantine area. 



It is therefore practically certain that the Nile must have 



