MALTA AND SICILY. 
47 
an explanation is ever given in the present 
day. As I have not for some years read any 
observations on the cause of this extraor¬ 
dinary current, perhaps the speculations 
which follow may contain nothing new on 
the subject, but they may be so to you, and 
therefore I shall insert them. 
It appears to me very easy to prove, that 
this influx of water cannot be occasioned by 
evaporation. For by a rough calculation of 
the whole contents of the Mediterranean, of 
the quantity of water annually poured in 
through the Straits, and of the proportion ol 
salt contained in that water, I find that in 
two or three centuries the quantity of solid 
matter carried into the sea, will equal in 
bulk the whole of the water it contains. So 
that the Mediterranean would no longer be a 
sea, but a vast accumulation of solid salt. 
Another cause that has sometimes been 
