views, see last edition of Canon
Tristram's Land of Israel, p. 635. For the geology, see Lartet, in his
reports to the French Geographical Society, and especially in vol. iii
of De Luynes's work, where there is an admirable geological map with
sections, etc.; also Ritter; also Sir J. W. Dawson's Egypt and Syria,
published by the Religious Tract Society; also Rev. Cunningham Geikie,
D. D., Geology of Palestine; and for pictures showing salt formation,
Tristram, as above. For the meteorology, see Vignes, report to De
Luynes, pp. 65 et seq. For chemistry of the Dead Sea, see as above,
and Terreil's report, given in Gage's Ritter, vol. iii, appendix 2, and
tables in De Luynes's third volume. For zoology of the Dead Sea, as to
entire absence of life in it, see all earlier travellers; as to presence
of lower forms of life, see Ehrenberg's microscopic examinations in
Gage's Ritter. See also reports in third volume of De Luynes. For botany
of the Dead Sea, and especially regarding "apples of Sodom," see Dr.
Lortet's La Syrie, p. 412; also Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie, vol. ix,
p. 737; also for photographic representations of them, see portfolio
forming part of De Luynes's work, plate 27. For Strabo's very perfect
description, see his Geog., lib. xvi, cap. ii; also Fallmerayer, Werke,
pp. 177, 178. For names and positions of a large number of salt lakes in
various parts of the world more or less resembling the Dead Sea, see De
Luynes, vol. iii, pp. 242 et seq. For Trinidad "pitch lakes," found by
Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, see Lengegg, El Dorado, part i, p. 103, and
part ii, p. 101; also Reclus, Ritter, et al. For the general subject,
see Schenkel, Bibel-Lexikon, s.v. Todtes Meer, an excellent summery.
The description of the Dead Sea in Lenormant's great history is utterly
unworthy of him, and must have been thrown together from old notes after
his death. It is amazing to see in such a work the old superstitions
that birds attempting to fly over the sea are suffocated. See Lenormant,
Histoire ancienne de l'Orient, edition of 1888, vol. vi, p. 112. For the
absorption and adoption of foreign myths and legends by the Jews, see
Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 390. For the views of
Greeks and Romans, see especially Tacitus, Historiae, book v, Pliny, and
Strabo, in whose remarks are the germs of many of the mediaeval myths.
For very curious examples of these, see Baierus, De Excidio Sodomae,
Halle, 1690, passim.