OF SEVERAL PARTS OF WESTERN ASIA. 419 



and loose materials in the manner that is done by water ? Fi- 

 nally, the work of erecting them is too gi'eat for a people in the 

 rude stages of society. I cannot, therefore, but strongly suspect 

 that they may be the remnants of a formation which once spread 

 over the whole plain ; the most of which has been swept away. 

 I doubt, however, whether they are connected with drift; since 

 the materials composing them are fine, and not gravel, and are, 

 moreover, sorted or stratified. 



Robinson and Smith have described a large number of tumuli 

 of gravel on the west side of the Jordan, near Jericho. As some 

 of them were covered with the remains of buildings, it was very 

 natural to suspect them to be artificial. But the gi-eat number 

 scattered over the plain, rendered the supposition improbable. Dr. 

 Robinson was so kind recently, as to accompany me to a region 

 of tortuous and round-topped moraines in Amherst, that I might 

 satisfy myself whether their materials are similar to those around 

 Jericho. He declared that there was no difference, except that 

 those in Palestine are insulated cones, and those in Amherst 

 h'regular and tortuous. The insulated ones, however, are very 

 common in New England. I cannot, therefore, but strongly 

 suspect, that those in Palestine were produced by glacio-aqueous 

 agency. 



In passing through the Wady el Arabah, south of the Dead 

 Sea, Dr. Robinson describes some examples of bowlders and of 

 gi-avel and sand-hills, of such a character and extent, as to lead 

 one strongly to suspect them to be the result of the same agency. 

 But further observations will be necessary to settle the question. 



The most decisive example of glacio-aqueous agency which I 

 have met with as occurring in Western Asia, is given in the 

 Journal of the American missionary, Mr. Beadle, in Northern 

 Syria, — as related in the Missionary Herald. In travelling north- 

 erly along the coast from Beyroot, sixty or seventy miles, he 

 " reached a volcanic region with a remarkable locality of green- 

 stone. The pebbles from this locality are scattered the whole 

 distance to Beyroot. At that place they are quite small, but grad- 

 ually increase in size as you advance to the north, and terminate 

 entirely in this locality." If such a case as this had been found 



