6 ([return])
[ At a comparatively recent period, the littoral margin of the Persian Gulf extended certainly 250 miles farther to the northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el Arab. (Loftus, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1853, p. 251.) The actual extent of the marine deposit inland cannot be defined, as it is covered by later fluviatile deposits.]
7 ([return])
[ Tiele (Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschicthe, pp. 572-3) has some very just remarks on this aspect of the epos.]
8 ([return])
[ In the second volume of the History of the Euphrates, p. 637 Col. Chesney gives a very interesting account of the simple and rapid manner in which the people about Tekrit and in the marshes of Lemlum construct large barges, and make them water-tight with bitumen. Doubtless the practice is extremely ancient and as Colonel Chesney suggests, may possibly have furnished the conception of Noah's ark. But it is one thing to build a barge 44ft. long by 11ft. wide and 4ft. deep in the way described; and another to get a vessel of ten times the dimensions, so constructed, to hold together.]
9 ([return])
[ "Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit," Maximen und Reflexionen, iii.]
10 ([return])
[ The well-known difficulties connected with this case have recently been carefully discussed by Mr. Bell in the Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow.]