34 Mr. Beke on the former Extent of the Persian Gulf, 



elliptic muscular mass. 1 have exhibited before the Geological 

 Society one of the specimens which suggested to me this idea, 

 and the sight of it illustrates those facts which I have ex- 

 plained in my work better than a more lengthened descrip- 

 tion. That a bivalve may have been an interior shell is rather 

 an unexpected exception to all known rules of conchology. 

 It is, however, not a theory of mine, but is borne out by plain 

 facts. To this singular genus I gave the name o{ Ichthyosia- 

 gojies (1829). It has been changed since to Aptychus, I know 

 not why; and again, both the types oi Pseudammonites and 

 Ichythyosiagones have been mixed together as species belong- 

 ing to the same genus, more particulaily in a paper printed 

 last year in the memoirs of the Linnaean Society of Normandy, 

 by Mr. Eudes de Longchamp, who proposed a new name 

 for the genus " Munsteria " ! 



The object I have had in presenting to the meeting of the 

 Geological Society some of the fossils I have spoken of, is to call 

 the attention of English geologists to these shells, that a new 

 investigation may be made by some conchologist, in order to 

 reexamine the question whether these fossils are to form the 

 types of two distinct genera, according to my observations; or 

 if they are to be considered as of one genus, but specifically 

 differing from each other, v/hich seems to be the opinion of those 

 persons, who are influenced in drawing their conclusion from 

 the apparent similarity of the external form of these shells. 

 Yours very truly, 



D. E. RiippELL. 



X. On the former Extent of the Persian Gulf and on the 'Non- 

 identity of Babylon and Babel; in Reply to Mr. Carter. By 

 C. T. Beke, Esq., F.S.A. 



[Continued from page 515, and concluded.] 



/^N the subject of the unlikelihood that Babel would, in the 

 ^^ earliest post-diluvian ages, have been built in the lowlands 

 of the Euphrates (supposing them to have existed), Mr. Car- 

 ter observes that " no allusion is made to his answer that the 

 cities and settlements of a hot climate, a7id more particularly 

 those of an early people, are of necessity fixed in such places." 

 In a foi;raer paper of mine* I stated that a portion of Mr. 

 Carter's arguments, which I then combated, was "founded 

 upon the assumption that society in the time of Noah existed 

 in a state of infancy as regarded its culture and knowledge;" 

 he having remarked in the paper to which that was a reply f, 



* Lond, and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. iv. p. 281 . + Ihid., p. 182. 



