392 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



the influence of a tropical sun for eight months of the year, 

 would doubtless become a focus which would develop and 

 distribute all the evils of malaria. M. Roudaire, the origi- 

 nator and champion of the scheme, has made a personal ex- 

 amination of the region between Biskra and the Gulf of 

 Gabes, and estimates that his project will necessitate the 

 removal of some 20,000,000 cubic meters of sand, the prob- 

 able expense of which will be about 30,000,000 francs. The 

 alleged advantages of this project we have detailed in pre- 

 vious volumes. 



FLOODING OF THE SAHARA. 



Mr. Donald Mackenzie lias not yet abandoned his pet 



scheme for opening Africa to commerce by turning the 



waters of the Atlantic into the African desert. His present 



plan, as expressed before the Chamber of Commerce and the 



Philosophical Society at Bradford, England, is to utilize the 



vast plain or basin known as El-Jaf, containing an area of 



80,000 square miles. This vast depression, which is affirmed 



by Mr. Mackenzie to be some two hundred feet below the 



ocean-level, and to have been formerly connected with the 



Atlantic Ocean by a channel now blocked up with sand, it 



is proposed to restore to its ancient condition as an arm of 



the sea by removing this barrier, and thus open a navigable 



highway for the commerce of the world to the very heart 



of Africa. 



ANOTHER AFRICAN PROJECT. 



The latest eno;meerino* scheme affecting this continent 

 originates with Sir Samuel Baker, who proposes a plan by 

 which not only the water of the Nile, but the silt (of which 

 the greater portion is now wastefully deposited in the Med- 

 iterranean Sea), shall be turned to good account as a fertil- 

 izer of the deserts of Nubia, Libya, and the Soudan. He 

 proposes in the London Times the construction of a system 

 of engineering works by which a portion of the Nile flood- 

 water, with its annual burden of soil robbed from the fertile 

 slopes of the Abyssinian plateaux, shall be diverted into 

 these deserts, where it may deposit its rich sediment on 

 the sands, and also irrigate them, so as to transform a desert 

 into " cotton-fields that would render England independent 

 of America." This desideratum he proposes to accomplish 



