OF SEVERAL PARTS OF WESTERN ASIA. 359 



who have been merely the medium through which the specimens 

 and resuhs have been transmitted. 



The developement of Umestone in the wide region extending 

 from Upper Egypt to the northern part of Syria, judging from the 

 testimony of travellers, must be immense. Nearly all Palestine 

 appears to be underlaid by it, and Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon 

 are mainly composed of it. How much of this rock is the 

 chalky limestone, I know" not. But travellers describe this vari- 

 ety as occupying the surface to a considerable extent over the 

 wide area above named. In most places its strata are horizon- 

 tal, but in others highly inclined. Rev. W. M. Thomson, an 

 American missionary, whom I have not mentioned, has given, in 

 his journal in the Missionary Herald, an account of an excursion 

 from Beyroot to Aleppo ; and in one place on Mount Lebanon, 

 near Ant Elias, where he was accompanied by Mr. Hebard, he 

 says, that the thick layers of marl, which are there " separated by 

 thin strata of hard limerock," stand perpendicular to the horizon. 

 (Miss. Herald, Januarij 1841, p. 30.) M. Botta has described the 

 rocks of Lebanon as consisting of three gi'oups. The highest 

 is composed of limestones of variable hardness, alternating with 

 marls ; the middle gi'oup embraces siliceous beds and nodules, 

 with fossil shells and fishes ; and the lowest gi'oup is mostly 

 sandstone, with beds of silico-calcareous matter, iron ore, and 

 lignite. He refers the whole formation to the chalk. 



It may be presumption in me to raise a doubt as to the con- 

 clusion that the vast pile of mountains, nearly ten thousand feet 

 high, called Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and indeed all the com- 

 pact limestones from Syria to Syene, belong to the cretaceous 

 group. But the exact identity of lithological characters between 

 many of the specimens sent me by Mr. Hebard, and the litho- 

 graphic limestone of the Jura, or Oolite group, from Germany, 

 (specimens of which are laid upon the table for comparison,) 

 cannot but excite the inquiry, whetlier the rock on w^hich Jerusa- 

 lem is built, (No. 422,) and Nos. 33 and 44 from Anti-Lebanon, 

 26 and 37 from near Damascus, 32 from the Pool of Siloa, and 

 45 from the rock at Hebron, in which is the cave where Abraham 

 was buried, may not belong to the Oolite. In other words, 



