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interesting spots in this sea in regard to natural history, 
I suspect that there is a difference in the level in the 
Red Sea, which tends progressively to its desiccation. 
The level taken by ancient geographers, who found that 
©f the Red Sea to be higher than that of the Mediterra- 
nean, has been regarded as apocryphal or erroneous, 
but I am led to think that such might have been the 
case at that distant period, and that at present the Red 
Sea is upon a level with the Mediterranean, or perhaps 
not so elevated. 
The rapid progression with which the Red Sea re- 
cedes, whilst the Mediterranean appears to be station- 
ary, or to retrograde more slowly, led me long ago to 
believe in this difference of level between the two seas, 
independently of the more general difference. This is 
owing to the accumulation of the waters in certain 
points, which is the reason that the surface of the two 
seas does not perhaps coincide with that imputed to the 
terrestrial spheroid. This is not the place to unfold a 
question which would carry us too far from our subject, 
and which I shall treat of particularly in another place. 
1 shall merely state a few remarkable observations upon 
this subject. 
At the place called El Wadjih upon the coast of 
Arabia is a bank, the higher surface of which is from 
twenty -four to thirty feet above the actual surface of 
the Red Sea. Its mean breadth is 200 toises, by several 
miles in length, following the windings of the coast. 
This bank adheres to the main land, which is more 
elevated; its surface is exactly plain and level. At the 
water's edge it is perpendicular, so that it resembles 
the platform of a fortification. 
After having examined the zoophytes which com- 
pose this bank, it appeared to me to be of a very recent 
Vol. II. 2E 
