510 Mr. Beke on the former Extent of the Persian Gulf, 
comes no slight one when, as was frequently the case, those 
standards of measurement, although of widely different 
lengths, had the same name*; added to which, we must bear 
in mind that the various distances recorded were, at various 
times, applicable to different states of the country, in those 
portions of it which were liable to change. The possible ex- 
istence of errors of copyists is, of course, not to be lost sight 
of; but I question much whether we may be authorized to en- 
tertain “serious doubts of the authenticity” of passages which 
do not exactly coincide with our preconceived notions. 
In his former papert Mr. Carter cites various authorities 
in illustration of the passage from Pliny, in part originally 
quoted by met; which passage he understands (though I can- 
not conceive how,) to mean that “long before Pliny’s time 
the two rivers had united above the embouchure somewhere, 
not by encroachments on the gulf and formation of delta, 
but simply by the labour of hands;’ and in his present reply 
that gentleman repeats that those various authorities “ all 
harmonize with the unbroken sense of this passage :” meaning, 
of course, as it is interpreted by him. I confess that in my 
last answer I dismissed these authorities rather summarily, 
and I did so on account of my not being able to discover their 
application, and on account also of the “discrepancies” exist- 
ing among them, which my opponent himself admitted §. And 
on this point an explanation is due from me to Mr. Carter. In 
your Number for June last (1835), I stated that “these autho- 
rities, according to his (Mr. C.’s) admission, contain ‘some dis- 
crepancies,’ and are not always ‘very explicable,’” in which I 
was thus far wrong: the being not “‘ very explicable” was (as 
he now observes,) * distinctly ‘applied by him ¢o Pliny’s general 
account of the two rivers only,” the “discrepancies” having 
* We have a precisely analogous case in the various miles of the present 
day, and we may easily conceive the case of a geographer in future ages 
being strangely perplexed on this account. Take, for instance, the distance 
between St. Petersburg and Riga, which by a Swede would be said to be 
50 miles ; by a German, 71 miles; and by an Englishman, 285 or 330 miles; 
whilst a Frenchman would call it 95 or 118 leagues, and a Russian 495 
wersts; to which might be added, perhaps, twenty other measures of modern 
Europe (principally miles), all differing with one another. Here would be 
ample ground for complaining, as Pliny did, of the “inconstantia mensure,” 
but certainly none for the conclusion that ‘‘the distance was utterly un- 
certain.” 
+ Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. v. p. 249. 
{ “Inter duorum amnium ostia 25 mill. pass. fuere, aut (ut alii tradunt) 
7 mill. utroque navigabili. Sed longo tempore Euphratem preclusere Or- 
cheni, et accolz agros rigantes; nec nisi Pasitigri defertur in mare.” — Hist. 
Nat., lib. vi. cap. 27. 
§ “ But notwithstanding some discrepancies, the conclusion from the 
above authorities surely is,” &c. . 
