204 
SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS. [May 24, 1858. 
occasion to make honourable mention of a survey of the Delta of 
the Danube in the Black Sea, by Lieut. Wilkinson, under the orders 
of Captain Spratt. This has now been completed for the Kilia branch 
as well as for the Sulina and the St. George ; and the facts brought to 
light in the course of the survey of the advance of the alluvial delta in 
one part, and its washing away by the inroads of the sea in another, 
have been usefully turned to account by Captain Spratt, in his 
Beport ‘ On the Comparative Condition of the Branches of the 
Danube,’ as a warning to the engineers engaged in the improvement 
of that river to be careful how they place ponderous stone walls on 
so unstable a foundation. At the same time it is shown, that with 
simple guiding, and a free use of the dredging-machine, there is 
a fair probability of the Danube being so improved, that vessels 
of moderate draught of water may load their corn at Galatz, and 
convey it without transhipment to Western Europe in safety. The 
plans which I have mentioned, by Lieut. Wilkinson, will doubtless 
be in request at the approaching Paris Conferences on the subject 
of the Principalities, and will well repay the labour of those who 
consult them. 
Following up his deep-sea soundings of last year to the eastward - 
of Malta, Captain Spratt has made some experiments on the sur- 
face and submarine currents of the Sea of Marmora, in which he 
shows that the surface current gradually diminishes and vanishes 
at a depth of 40 fathoms, and that no counter current is found 
below ; also that the density of the water is not perceptibly greater 
from that level to the depth of 1500 fathoms ; from which depth he 
has brought up by his sounding-lead some beautiful specimens of 
minute, delicate shells of Cleodora , Limacina , Spirialia, Atlanta , &c. 
The survey of the eastern half of the large island of ancient 
Crete, or Candia (the Kirit Adassi of the Turks), by Spratt, Mansell, 
and Wilkinson, has been published at the Admiralty during the past 
year, and for the first time we have an accurate representation of 
that fertile and beautiful island (with Mount Ida towering to a 
height of 7000 feet), which was formerly so populous and civilised 
that Homer * speaks of its hundred cities, Kpijrrj e^aTOju7ro\iQ. In 
modern times, and we trust before the close of the present summer, 
this island is destined to form the connecting link between the 
lines of submarine telegraph that are to unite Constantinople and 
Alexandria. 
* See notice of Crete, by the Right Hon. W. Gladstone, in his new work on the 
Odyssey. 
