308 PROFESSOR E. HULL, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., ON THE 
W. Dawson,* Oscar Fraas, in his work entitled Aus dem 
Orient, of Carl A. Zittel,t whose elaborate work is the most 
important essay on the subject which has hitherto appeared ; 
and numerous reports by Dr. Schweinfurth, who has for a 
series of years been carrying on geological investigations in 
Egypt and adjoinmg countries under the auspices of the 
Berlin Geological Society. In connection with the geological 
structure of Sinai and Palestine, that of Egypt necessarily 
calls for some observations, as the physical history of all the 
region bordering the Levant is very much the same. Geo- 
logically speaking, those countries extending from Asia 
Minor and the Lebanon through Palestine and into Egypt 
are all of very recent age, and came into existence as land 
areas, reclaimed from the ocean in Middle Tertiary times. 
But before entering on such details, a rapid survey of the 
physical features of Egypt and bordering countries may be 
considered desirable. 
Part II.—GENERAL STRUCTURE OF UPPER AND LOWER 
EGYPT. 
The physical divisions of Egypt are somewhat different 
from those of Ptolemy, wherein we have Lower, Middle, 
and Upper Egypt in succession from north to south, or from 
the Mediterranean coast to, and beyond, the First Cataract. 
Physically and geologically, the most convenient plan of 
territorial arrangement is to assume a ternary division in a 
somewhat different direction, as follows :—— 
Ist, The Delta (or Lower Egypt) and Nile Valley ; 2nd, the 
Libyan Desert, lying to the west of the Nile Valley above 
Cairo; and 8rd, the region between the Nile Valley and the 
Red Sea and Gulf of Suez, called in some of our maps by 
the rather misleading name of the “Arabian Desert,” a 
name more properly applicable to the region east of the Red 
Sea and the Gulf. 
A very brief description of these three regions is all that is 
here necessary. 
1. The Deltat is the smallest, but, economically, the most 
important, of the three divisions, extending from the open- 
* “ Notes on the Geology of the Nile Valley and of Egypt,” Geol. Mag., 
Nos. 241, 242, 243, 244; and Egypt and Syria (1883). 
+ Ueber den Geol. Bau der Iibyschen Wiiste (Miinchen, 1880). 
t See Plate, also Dr. Porter’s description of this region, Jowrnal, vol. xx, 
p- 15. 
