580 Frof. T. G. Bonney — The Kishon and Jordan Valleys. 



But the study of its fauna and flora has much strengthened 

 the arguments for the former connection of the Jordan valley 

 with the Gulf of Akabah. In Canon Tristram's words,^ written 

 twenty years ago (which, as we can see from the excellent 

 summary given by Professor Gregory,- have been fortified by 

 additional evidence), " A review of the botany as well as the zoology 

 of the Dead Sea basin reveals to us the interesting fact that we find 

 in this isolated spot .... a series of forms of life, differing 

 decidedly from the species of the surrounding region, to which they 

 never extend, and bearing a strong affinity to the Ethiopian region, 

 with a trace of Indian admixture. As the species which serve as 

 the most striking illustrations of this fact live either in or beside 

 fresh water, a river connection is the most natural agency by which 

 to account for it, and as these species are absent from the Lower 

 Nile valley and from Egypt, the river connection must have been 

 established along the eastern side of the range of highlands which 

 separates the Nile from the Eed Sea." Professor Gregory, though 

 advocating this connection, thinks it unnecessary to assume that 

 " a river flowed the whole way from the Jordan to tlie northern 

 end of the Eed Sea," because fish from the south might have 

 made their way to a lake, which is shown by its deposits* to 

 have existed on the northern side of the watershed and a few 

 feet below it, when "an occasional flood or a slight earth-movement 

 would have enabled them to enter the stream which flowed north- 

 wards." That, no doubt, is possible, though I should think not 

 very probable, unless the spawn were conveyed by birds, but it does 

 not account for the continuous trench of the Arabah-Akabah valley. 

 Professor Hull is not unconscious of this diflSculty, for he says, 

 speaking of the valley of the Arabah and this watershed,^ "it is 

 difficult to see how this great valley, which is sonietinies seven 

 or eight miles in width, especially near its centre,^ could have been 

 excavated and levelled down unless the action of the rivers and 

 streams of the bordering hills had been originally supplemented 

 by tlie levelling action of the sea waves on the south and the 

 inland waters of a great lake on the north of the watershed." But 

 so far as I am aware, there is no proof that the old Jordan 

 valley lake ever rose more than about a hundred feet above the 

 Mediterranean, and if the sea waves were to approach near to 

 this barrier, to cut a fjord from forty to forty-live miles long, 

 north of the present shore at Akabah, either the sea must have 

 been more than 600 feet higher or the land the same amount 

 lower than at present. In the former case I think that the 

 Mediterranean would probably have occupied the valley of Esdraelon 

 and gained access to the inland lake on one or both sides of Jebel 



1 " The Fauua and Flora of Palestine " (1884), p. xvi. 



2 " The Great Rift Valley" (1896), p. 262. 

 •'' They were discovered by Professor Hull. 



* Mount Seir (1855), p. 82. 



5 In the " Survey of Western Palestine" (Geology), p. 18, he says that north of 

 the watershed it is nearly double (6 or 7 miles). 



