344 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



Albert Nyanza, and his report is published in the Proceed- 

 ings of the Royal Geographical Society for May 9, 1878. 



Colonel Mason, whose observations seem to have been 

 carefully and accurately made, agrees with M. Gessi in plac- 

 ing the southern end of the lake in lat. 1 11' N. ; but Sir 

 Samuel Baker, in a letter to the President of the Geograph- 

 ical Society, calls in question the accuracy of this determina- 

 tion, insisting that the southern end of the lake lies much 

 farther south. Dr. Behm, in the Mittheilungcn, concludes 

 that, judging from the accordance of Mason's and Gessi's 

 observations, Stanley, who reported the same place as being 

 in lat. 11' N., could not have been at the Albert Nyanza, 

 bnt at some more southern lake. 



Dr. G. Xachtigall publishes, in the Mittheilungen, a short 

 description of the route between Tripoli and Fezzan, accom- 

 panied by a track-chart. He speaks of the desert of Sahara 

 as lying generally at a considerable elevation above the sea- 

 level, forming a plateau, with the coastwise mountains as its 

 limiting terraces. 



Under the auspices of the German Geographical Society, 

 the well-known explorer Hen* Gerhard Rolf has undertaken 

 a journey across Africa, from north to south. Starting from 

 Tripoli, Herr Rolf intends to proceed first to the neighbor- 

 hood of Lake Chad, and thence to traverse the great un- 

 known country between Lake Chad and the middle course 

 of the Congo. 



Under the auspices of the French government, Captain 

 Roudaire, of the French Army, is engaged in an examination 

 of the Algerian and Tunisian chotts, or depressions, in the Sa- 

 hara Desert, with a view to ascertain the practicability of 

 forming an inland sea by admitting the waters of the Med- 

 iterranean through an inlet to be cut through the Isthmus 

 of Gabes. In recent communications to the Academic des 

 Sciences, through M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, Captain Roudaire 

 states that careful levellings and numerous borings made by 

 him indicate the feasibility of the scheme, which has the sup- 

 port of the Bey of Tunis. 



ASIA. 



A new map of Russian Turkistan and adjacent countries, 

 in twelve sheets, prepared at the Russian Topographical De- 



