214 Pro/. E. R. Leivis — Localities for Fossil Fish in the Lebanon. 



being converted into sandy wastes. The depth of the river, too, is 

 yearly decreasing, and can to-day float only light flat-bottomed 

 boats. 



During the rainy season in November, I resided in Lisbon ; and 

 took advantage of the first fair day — a fortnight after it had set 

 in — to visit the soft red sandstone cliffs on the south bank of the 

 Tagus, facing the town, and forming the south-western boundary of 

 the large bay into which the river expands. Here the amount of 

 denudation must have been thousands of tons. The whole front of 

 the cliffs had suffered severely, as \hQ. debris at the fort and the red 

 colour exhibited by the river for ten or twelve days previously 

 testified; but in many places quarry-like excavations had carried 

 the head of the cliffs back some ten to fifteen feet for a length of 

 several yards. A little distance inland, at a spot where the road 

 runs between cliffs, of the same sandstone, of 50 to 60 feet in 

 height, a similar effect had been produced. Here nearly a hundred 

 blocks of various sizes were lying, at the foot among a mass of 

 disintegrated sand, trees and shrubs. I give the measurement, in 

 metres, ofj one of intermediate size, and of roughly triangular 

 shape : length, 2*4 ; thickness at base, 1*5 ; at apex, -o ; average 

 height, 2-4. The amount of denudation for the rest of this wet 

 season must have been very great, when so much was accomplished 

 in one short fortnight. 



VI. — The Fossil Fish Localities of the Lebanon. 



By the Eev. E. E. Lewis, M.A., F.G.S., 



Professor in the Syrian Protestant College, Beiriit, Syria. 



IF an apology were needed for writing a few words upon the 

 subject of the fossil fish of the Lebanon, mine would be this, 

 that I have resided so near the well-known localities as to be able to 

 visit them often and collect more and better specimens than have 

 ever been found there before. Many and celebrated geologists and 

 paleeontologists have written upon the subject of the fossil fish 

 found here, and yet the localities have been visited by few of those 

 who have written best. The distinguished palaeontologist F. J. 

 Pictet published a volume in 1850,^ and another, together with 

 M, Alois Humbert, in 1866,^ in which are found interesting histories 

 of the localities Hakel and Sahel Alma, and most excellent and 

 accurate descriptions and figures of the fossil fish found there up to 

 the last date mentioned. But for four yeai's I have been receiving 

 specimens from Sahel Alma, and nearly as long from Hakel, and 

 now have all the specimens mentioned or described by M. Pictet 

 with a difference. Where he had, in many cases, imperfect speci- 

 mens, I have now, in all cases, superb examples ; where he spoke 

 only by name, of species described by Costa and others, of which he 



^ Description de quelques Poissons Fossiles du Mont Liban, par F. J. Pictet. 

 Geneve, J. G. Fick, 1850. 



2 Nouvelles recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles du Mont Liban, par F. J. Pictet 

 et Alois Hmnbert. Geneve, H. Georg, 1866. 



