276 FOSSIL FOOD 



the dickens generally with Scripture geography, to the in- 

 finite delight of Sunday school classes. Now, when the 

 Dead Sea first began its independent career as a separate 

 sheet of water on its own account, it no doubt occupied the 

 whole bed of this imaginary engineers' lake spreading, if 

 not from Dan to Beersheba, at any rate from Dan to Edom, 

 or, in other words, along the whole Jordan Valley from the 

 Sea of Galilee and even the Waters of Merom to the 

 southern desert. (I will not insult the reader's intelligence 

 and orthodoxy by suggesting that perhaps he may not be 

 precisely certain as to the exact position of the Waters of 

 Merom ; but I will merely recommend him just to refresh 

 his memory by turning to his atlas, as this is an opportu- 

 nity which may not again occur.) The modern Dead Sea is 

 the last shrunken relic of such a considerable ancient lake. 

 Its waters are now so very concentrated and so very nasty 

 that no fish or other self-respecting animal can consent 

 to live in them ; and so buoyant that a man can't drown 

 himself, even if he tries, because the sea is saturated with 

 salts of various sorts till it has become a kind of soup or por- 

 ridge, in which a swimmer floats, will he nill he. Persons 

 in the neighbourhood who wish to commit suicide are there- 

 fore obliged to go elsewhere : much as in Tasmania, the 

 healthiest climate in the world, people who want to die are 

 obliged to run across for a week to Sydney or Melbourne. 

 The waters of the Dead Sea are thus in the condition 

 of having already deposited almost all their gypsum, as 

 well as the greater part of the salt they originally con- 

 tained. They are, in fact, much like sea water which has 

 been boiled down till it has reached the state of a thick 

 salty liquid ; and though most of the salt is now already 

 deposited in a deep layer on the bottom, enough still 

 remains in solution to make the Dead Sea infinitely salter 

 than the general ocean. At the same time, there are a 



