1869-71 HIS PAPER AT THE 'INSTITUT' 203 



" Institut" as one of the eight foreign members, 

 read a paper there " On the Geology of Egypt," 

 and so home on March 18. 



On the occasion of the Royal Geographical 

 Society dinner, which was given on May 25, 1869, 

 Owen, in answering the toast 'The Scientific and 

 Literary Results of the last Nile Expedition,' gave 

 some account of his observations during his recent 

 tour. He said: 'In the grand and praiseworthy 

 labours of the accomplished engineers of the Suez 

 Canal I had opportunities of seeing sections of the 

 Desert — deposits of unusual depth and extent. 

 In parts of these were alternations of strata, thin 

 beds of argillaceous deposit between thicker ones 

 of silico-calcareous and gypseous materials, which 

 suggested that the old ocean of that locality — for 

 all the Desert is an upraised seabed — had begun 

 to receive, about the close of the Miocene period, 

 alluviums, or the wear by fresh water of an adja- 

 cent land, and these at regularly repeated intervals. 

 The phenomena and fossils suggested to me that 

 the surface contour of the African continent 

 might about that time have gained so much of its 

 present form as to cause a watershed in the direc- 

 tion indicated by the course of the present Nile. In 

 the Desert deposits of the nummulitic and creta- 

 ceous periods there is no trace of this fresh -water 

 alternating admixture. So far as my limited 

 opportunities of observation extended, I found 

 no evidence of those repeated disturbances or 



