324 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



supposition by an exhaustive examination of the laws of move- 

 ment of air and other fluids. I may say, in short, that even those 

 who may not agree with the author's reasonings will find both 

 pleasure and profit in studying the rich store of observation and 

 lucid argument contained in this little work. 



" Among the many interesting papers which will be read before 

 you during the present meeting I may announce two, on subjects 

 of great general interest, by General Sir Henry Rawiinson, one 

 on the Site of Paradise, and the other on the River O.xus, both 

 the fruits of long study and research, and sure to be listened to 

 with the attention that everything emanating from so distin- 

 guished a geographer and philologist so well deserves. . An im- 

 portant communication from Dr. George Campbell on the Ph} r sical 

 Geography of British India is also expected, a subject which 

 has iDeen for years a special study of the author, during his resi- 

 dence in a high official position in India. Mr. T. T. Cooper, a 

 traveller who has distinguished himself by his persevering en- 

 deavors to traverse the difficult country between Western China 

 and our Indian possessions in Assam, will read a paper on East- 

 ern Thibet, in which he will dilate on the commercial bearings of 

 his explorations, which were undertaken with a view to discover 

 a route for an overland trade between the populous and produc- 

 tive regions of the Yang-tsze-Kiang in China and the equally rich 

 and densely populated plains of British India. With regard to 

 Africa, that great continent which still continues the principal 

 field of geographical enterprise, I have to announce that Mr. 

 Winwood Reade, who has recently returned from an explora- 

 tion undertaken under the auspices of the Royal Geographical 

 Society, and at the cost of an enlightened merchant, Mr. Andrew 

 Swanzy, will communicate to the section an account of his hazard- 

 ous journey to the Upper Waters of the Niger and to the Boure 

 country. Mr. Reade explored a portion of the Niger not pre- 

 viously visited by any European traveller, and opened up a tract 

 of populous country, in which is situated the town of Farabana, 

 containing 10,000 inhabitants, previously unknown to geogra- 

 phers. 



"In respect to those portions of Central America with which 

 many readers have become acquainted through the descriptions 

 of Stephens and Squier, I may inform J T OU that } : ou will be inter- 

 ested in a communication from Captain J. Carmichael upon 

 countries occupied by the Indians of British Honduras and Yucatan. 

 Ascribing an Eastern, and probably an Egyptian, origin to the 

 earlier buildings and temples of the aboriginal American Indians 

 and their idols, the author, who has explored the regions he 

 describes, and speaks their language, endeavors to throw addi- 

 tional light on the subject. He confesses, however, that in these 

 mysterious monuments he finds as much difficulty in assigning 

 them definitely to any race of men as British and other authors 

 have had in fixing the origin of our own most ancient monuments 

 at home, such as Stonehenge and other Druidical remains. 

 He differs from Stephens and Squier, and those authors who 

 do not assign a great antiquity to these reliquiae, and shows that 



