duced at first equivalent varieties and, subsequently, equivalent species.*

According to him, a mollusc living at Port Sa'id, and its equivalent at Suez, are the two forms derived from a single stips, alive or extinct; and from a type existing in a given place can proceed equivalent species and varieties, if the locality has undergone changes more or less radical; whilst geographical species and varieties result only from the diffusion of the same type to great distances, where the new media gradually evolve new characteristics.

The lovely coral-fields of the northern Red Sea are described and figured in colour and perspective by Eugen Baron Ransonnet. One of his drawings represents an aquarium-like coral-group in the harbour of Tor. It is an oasis containing some twenty-one objects, especially the large dome-shaped Careophyllina; the rounded Meandrine; the Polypi (Alcyonia and nephthya); the rosy-red Seriatopora ; a Scutella (Raghif el-Bahr), prickly like the urchin ; the representative Madrepora (porites), ochre-yellow

Of these equivalents in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, our author gives (pp. 39-40) thirty instances. All were

collected at Suez.

† Reise von Kairo nach Tor, zu den Korallenbänken des rothen Meeres. Verhandlung des K. K. Zoologisch-botanischen Gesellschaft in Wien (pp. 163-188, Jahrbuch 1863, xiii. Band. Braumüller).

and carmine, or round and rosy; the leathery Spongia (retifera); the fan-shaped Padina (pavonia); the conus-shell which furrows the sand; the regular globes of the Favosites, one of the cacti of the sea ; the sponge-like Madrepora (conglomerata); the purple-red "organ-coral" (Tubipora musica); the fan-shaped Millepora (complanata) which burns the skin and the leaf-like Monticularia.

;

The higher life is represented by the hermitcrab (Pagurus bernardus), the small Blennius, the coffee-fish, and the shark. The Baron's other illustration shows the section of a big coral-bank near the entrance of Tor, containing a large and rare Monticulari; two Heteroporas growing like a stalk of erica; a mushroom-shaped Alcyonium; and the branchy Sertularia, haunted by the bird-like Platax, and by the violet-ringed Medusa (aurita), the latter also belonging to the seas of Europe.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CRUISE NORTHWARDS TO MAKNÁ, CAPITAL OF

MADYAN.

On April 15th the Sinnár steamed out of Sherm Zibá and, passing El-Muwayláh, anchored for the night in a snug Khor (natural port), a kind of Sandy Hook, on the western flank of the circular Sináfir or Senáfir Island.* The lumpy, low-lying, waterlacking rock, about 150 feet high, and utterly bare

• The following is a synopsis of the identifications, by various writers, of the six islets which, beginning from the south, outlie the Midian shore:

1. Silah, a mere coral-reef, is Sprenger's Salydó (Agatharkides)

and Müller's Sela I.

2. Yubu'a (not Ye'úbáh) is Sprenger's Soukabuá (Agath.), and Müller's Isura (Plin.).

3. Baráhkan (not Burrahghan), identified both by Sprenger and Müller with the "Isidis Insula" (Agath.).

4. Shu'shu'a (not Abou Choucha); Müller's Soukabuá.

5. Sináfir, Müller's Salydó.

6. Jazírat, or Jebel Tírán (not Tehran); the Iotábe of Procopius and Malchus; Müller's Dia (Agath. and Strabo); and Mannert's "Isle of Seals" (Agath.).

All were visited in 1833 by Lieut. Wellsted (ii. 173-179), but he does not name Umm Maksúr (p. 173), the peninsula-island.

of the trees with which the classics forested it, is the only feature which bears an Egyptian name; possibly from "Senofern, Pharaoh the Ameliorator (who makes good'), the twenty-fifth (?) and last King of the Third Dynasty; the Conqueror of Stranger Peoples' who overran Mafkat-land (Sinai of the turquoises), and whose memorials may still be found in Wady Magharah;" and this suggests that it may be the Isis Isle of Agatharkides.

A party landed in search of ruins, snakes, and guano, but found neither this, that, nor the other: Tírán, also, shows none of the huge and venomous reptiles with which the Arabs stock Sinafir. They brought back specimens of madrepores and corallines based upon decomposed granite, the general intrusive formation; and especially the brilliant redpurple Tubipora (Musica), called by the Arabs Dam El-Akhwán, or "Brother's Blood."* Burckhardt has remarked that the coral of El-Akabah is mostly red, while the white prevails in the Suez Gulf. They found fragments of petrosilex and ruddy rock-salt in bits of agglutinated sandstone similarly coloured: this material is also supplied by Sinaitic Sherm elShaykh, and, as we shall presently see, by Wady Makná.

"Brother's Blood" is also the popular Arab name of the mediæval drug, known to Europe as "Dragon's Blood." Forskâl (Descrip. Anim. xxix.) writes, by a clerical error, "Damm el-Akharayn."

Long-spined echini and hermit-crabs (paguri) were observed in numbers: every "flower of the sea" seemed to lodge a tenant, and the latter had ample choice of quarters in the heaps that strewed the shore. Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, to whom my few specimens were submitted, declared the shells to be interesting, although common, on account of the inhabitants. The plants proved to be those of the mainland. The fishermen were unusually successful, and we all enjoyed the excellent Tawín (Perca Tauvina, Forsk. p. xi., and Serranus Tauvina, Klemsinger, i. 683).

Next morning we set out, at 5.30 a.m., in a northerly wind which frequently fell calm, with a mar vecchio, the heave and wash of gales which had broken to the south. After steaming for an hour and a half we doubled the tall and grim Bird Isle (Tírán), conical above and queerly triangular below. We could hear nothing of the naphtha, which Wellsted declares (ii. 160) is produced abundantly enough to serve for "paying" Arab-boats. Then we found ourselves in the dangerous socte of ElAkabah.

This Sinus intimus, the eastern fork of the Erythræan, has been cursorily treated by the earlier classical geographers. Dr. Beke declares (Orig. Bib. p. 185) that in the days of Herodotus, the Akabah Gulf was "unknown to the Egyptians and,