THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



other ; and in this manner it still appears in the 

 charts of Ptolemy. Since then, the water has 

 been directed into the Bolbitian and Phatnitic 

 mouths ; and it is at these entrances into the sea 

 that the greatest depositions have been formed, 

 which have given the coast a semicircular outline. 

 The cities of Rosetta and Damieta, which were 

 built upon these mouths, close to the edge of the 

 sea, less than a thousand years ago, are now two 

 leagues distant from it. According to Demaillet*, 

 it would only have required twenty-six years to 

 form a promontory of half a league in extent be- 

 fore Rosetta . 



An elevation is produced in the soil of Egypt, 

 at the same time that this extension of its surface 

 takes place, and the bed of the river rises in the 

 same proportion as the adjacent plains, which 

 makes the inundations of every succeeding cen- 

 tury pass far beyond the marks which it had 

 left during the preceding ones. According to He- 

 rodotus, a period of nine hundred years was suf- 

 ficient to establish a difference of level amount- 

 ing to ten or twelve feet. At Elephantia f, the 

 inundation at present exceeds by seven feet the 

 greatest heights which it attained under Septi- 

 mus Severus, at the commencement of the third 



* Demaillet, Description of Egypt, p. 102,-3. 

 t Herod. Euterpe, xiii. 



