, lead to similar
conclusions.

_Imbedding of human and other remains, and works of Art, in Blown Sand._

The drifting of sand may next be considered among the causes capable of
preserving organic remains and works of art on the emerged land.

_African Sands._--The sands of the African deserts have been driven by
the west winds over part of the arable land of Egypt, on the western
bank of the Nile, in those places where valleys open into the plain, or
where there are gorges through the Libyan mountains. By similar
sand-drifts the ruins of ancient cities have been buried between the
temple of Jupiter Ammon and Nubia. M. G. A. De Luc attempted to infer
the recent origin of our continents, from the fact that these moving
sands have arrived only in modern times at the fertile plains of the
Nile. The same scourge, he said, would have afflicted Egypt for ages
anterior to the times of history, had the continents risen above the
level of the sea several hundred centuries before our era.[1023] But the
author proceeded in this, as in all his other chronological
computations, on a multitude of gratuitous assumptions. He ought, in the
first place, to have demonstrated that the whole continent of Africa was
raised above the level of the sea at one period; for unless this point
was established, the region from whence the sands began to move might
have been the last addition made to Africa, and the commencement of the
sand-flood might have been long posterior to the laying dry of the
greater portion of that continent. That the different parts of Europe
were not all elevated at one time is now generally admitted. De Luc
should also have pointed out the depth of drift sand in various parts of
the great Libyan deserts, and have shown whether any valleys of large
dimensions had been filled up--how long these may have arrested the
progress of the sands, and how far the flood had upon the whole advanced
since the times of history.

We have seen that Sir J. G. Wilkinson is of opinion that, while the
sand-drift is making aggressions at certain points upon the fertile soil
of Egypt, the alluvial deposit of the Nile is advancing very generally
upon the desert; and that, upon the whole, the balance is greatly in
favor of the fertilizing mud.[1024]

No mode of interment can be conceived, more favorable to the
conservation of monuments for indefinite periods than that now so common
in the region immediately westward of the Nile. The sand wh