70 Rev. H. B. Tristram on the Ornithology of Pales iine. 



of Palestine is rent by this long chasm, 1400 feet below the 

 level of the sea, enclosing tracts, some arid and salt, others fertile 

 and well watered, but all enjoying in the temperate zone the 

 climate of the tropics, and wholly distinct from the country on 

 either side. The enclosing ranges, as I have said, are prolonged 

 into the Red Sea ; but whether the Ghor was formerly a branch 

 of that gulf, and separated from it by the rising of the ridge of 

 Arabah (the height of the watershed of which has this year been 

 ascertained by M. Vignes to be 786 feet), or whether the valley 

 has been slowly depressed to the north of that ridge, is imma- 

 terial for us to consider with reference to the peculiarities of 

 its avifauna. In either case, the depression is, geologically 

 speaking, ancient, and has existed for such a series of ages as 

 to have permitted the introduction or development of the forms 

 most suitable to its climatic condition. These forms appear 

 most of them to be local and sedentary, and, though frequently 

 closely affined, are, so far as our present knowledge extends, 

 specifically distinct from their nearest congeners in adjacent 

 regions. 



Some of the peculiarities of the natural history of the Ghor 

 had not escaped the observation of the ancients, and in some of 

 their guesses there is an underlying vein of geological truth. 

 Josephus observes that some of the fishes of the Lake of Galilee 

 are peculiar, and that others, as the Cat-fish, KopaKLva {Clarias 

 macranthus, Gthr.), which he especially names, are identical 

 with the fishes of the Nile. Our specimens captured this year 

 prove the correctness of the assertion of Josephus. From this 

 identity of its fish, the old historian tells us that some have 

 thought the fountain and stream Capharnaum, which flows into 

 the lake, to be a vein {(})\€^a) of the Nile. Ptolemy, too, 

 mentions a notion that the Jordan was an old affluent of the 

 mighty river of Egypt. We may smile at these conceits, and 

 class them with the old stories of the underground stream from 

 the Euphrates to Tyre, from Lake Phiala round the base of 

 Hermon to the source of the Jordan, and the like ; but, after 

 all, there is a connexion, and a strong one, though not exactly 

 as the geographers of old may have dreamed. 



Of the fourteen species of fishes collected by us in the Lake 



