391 
of Edinburgh, Session 1879-80. 
including soft white marls and limestone overlying a hard 
crystalline dolomitic limestone of the Neocomian series. 
Batches of nummulitic limestone belonging to the early Tertiary 
beds are found in Galilee, and on Ebal, Gerizim, and Olivet. On 
the western slopes of Lebanon and on the east side of the Jordan 
valley the Nubian sandstone belonging to the time of the Greensand 
is found, but this formation never appears west of Jordan. 
The dip of the strata along the Jordan valley was very carefully 
noted during the prosecution of the survey. In every case a very 
sudden contortion of the strata was observable, the dip being east- 
wards or south east, and in places faults were found extending 
north and south. It was clear that the original depression had 
taken place after the Chalk period, and the basaltic outbreaks which 
surround the Sea of Galilee, and cover 500 square miles east of the 
lake, also belong apparently to the time of the first breakdown of 
the chasm in the early Tertiary period. 
The appearance of the sandstone east of the valley bottom is 
considered by L’Artet a conclusive proof of the fact, that the whole 
depression is due to a fault running north and south for 150 miles, 
and giving a fall of 3500 feet from the springs of Jordan to the 
bottom of the Dead Sea. 
The remains of an ancient beach were discovered by the survey 
party north of the plains of Jericho, and again south of the Sea of 
Galilee. Near the Dead Sea other beaches are visible at different 
levels, and it is clearly evident that the present valley was once 
occupied by a chain of great salt lakes, the surface of which was about 
on the same level with the Mediterranean, and which have at a 
comparatively recent geological period undergone a process of 
desiccation until they are now only represented by the smaller 
sheets of water known as the lakes of Merom and Tiberias and the 
Dead Sea, the extreme saltness of the latter being due to the 
gradual washing down of the chlorides from the basins now dry, a 
process which seems to promise the final consolidation of the Sea 
at a remote period into a bed of 500 square miles of salt. 
The questions connected with the climate and physical geography 
of Palestine, its ancient fertility, its present desolation, and the possi- 
bility of its future restoration, are of still higher interest, and the sur- 
vey seems to have thrown considerable light on these subjects also. 
