364 REPOKT — 1882. 



np. It is impossible to attribute the disappearance of all those animala 

 only to the action of man ; the less so as the countries where they have 

 been mentioned were infinitely more populated than they now are, and 

 therefore offered to wild beasts a less favourable abode than now. We 

 are consequently compelled to admit an alteration in the climatic con- 

 ditions of the country, namely, an increase of atmospheric dryness, 

 which may account for the late introduction of the camel in North Africa 

 and Asia Minor, as well as for the disappearance of the elephant. In 

 support of this opinion, Theobald Fischer reminds us, that both in 

 Asia and Africa the elephant excludes the camel, and vice versa, so that 

 in the upper part of the valley of the Nile, where the elephant prospers, 

 the camel thrives with difficulty. 



Dr. Oscar Fraas, the learned German geologist, also quotes ' the 

 absence on the Egyptian monuments of any figure of the camel, and 

 that not only in the famous ruined city Sakkarah, the walls of which 

 are covered with pictorial representations of different animals, but also in 

 Thebes, founded 3,000 years after Sakkarah. This fact proves that at that 

 time the desert did not exist, the presence of which is moreover excluded 

 by the numerous splendid monuments, which certainly their constructors 

 would not have built in the midst of inhospitable solitudes, any more than 

 the Emperor Hadrian would have erected near Rome the famous Villa 

 Hadriana amidst marshes, had they existed then as now. Oscar Fraas is , 

 of opinion that in Egypt the climatic conditions were quite different from I 

 the present, even in the time of the Greeks, when Alexandria was the I 

 brilliant focus of science and art, radiating her light on the whole world 1 

 then known. He believes that the extraordinary intellectual activity 

 which animated this city, supposes another climate, with a moister air. 

 ' On the present soil of the Nile land,' says Oscar Fraas, ' no philosophical 

 system can be born, and no human power could erect universities capable 

 of coping with those of Europe.' 



The conclusions suggested by Egypt are applicable in a still higher 

 degree to the neighbouring peninsula of Sinai. When we consider that 

 in this perfectly arid, waterless peninsula, the people of Israel, counting 

 60,000 fighting men, remained, after the exodus from Egypt, several 

 years, it becomes quite impossible not to admit that in those times 

 Sinai was a fertile Alpine region, provided with rich pasture-grounds and 

 irrigated by copious sources : in no respect could such a country have 

 the slightest resemblance to the barren desert it is now. 



The few instances I have reported are sufficient to prove that the 

 climate of the Sahara-Lybian desert, as well as that of the countries 

 surrounding the Mediterranean, have really undergone important altera- 

 tions, even during historical times. Now there are proofs that similar 

 changes in the level of the ground and in the vegetation of these 

 regions have taken place at a comparatively recent epoch. Theobald 

 Fischer, whom I have already had occasion to quote, has devoted to the 

 study of the topographical modifications of the Mediterranean countries 

 the same talent and erudition with which he has treated the question of the 

 successive climatic changes which have occurred there. In his paper, pub- 

 lished by the Geographical Society of Berlin,^ he elucidates this subject in 

 a masterly way, and the map annexed to his paper represents graphically 



' Aus dem Orient: geohgische Beohachtungen am Ml, au/der Sinai- HalUnsel vnd 

 in Syrieii (Stuttgart : 1867), pp. 214-216. 



* ZeittchHft der GeselUohaft fur Erdkunde r« Berlin, 1878, vol. xiii. p. 151. 



