342 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



RECENT GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS. 



In his address at the anniversary of the Royal Geographical Society 

 (Eng.) for 1864, Sir II. I. Murchison, the President, stated, that of 

 late years Russia has been the most eminent of nations in prose- 

 cuting geographical research : 



" The Geographical Society of St. Petersburg wields not only the 

 pOAver and influence of the Imperial Government of Russia, but 

 receives also large grants of public money, which have enabled it to 

 carry on simultaneous researches in the steppes near the Caspian and 

 in the Caucasus, and also to describe the "grand natural features of 

 Central Asia, the boundaries of the Chinese Empire, and the whole 

 river system of the mighty Amoor with its more numerous affluents. 

 In this way serious geographical errors have been corrected, and new 

 features laid down, by positive observations on maps ; while the nat- 

 ural history of the animals and plants, as well as of the human inhab- 

 itants of large regions of which little was previously known, has been 

 fully developed." 



Referring to explorations in Africa, he remarked, that although much 

 had been accomplished in late years in African exploration, " yet 

 much remains to be done to complete a general sketch even of the 

 geography of equatorial Africa ! Is it not essential that the Victoria 

 Nyanza of Spoke, a body of water as large as Scotland, which has 

 only been touched at a few points on its southern, western, and 

 northern shores, should have all its shores and affluents examined? 

 And do not the Mountains of the Moon of the same explorer invite a 

 survev ? Have we not vet to find out the source of the <jreat Zaire or 



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Congo, and trace that river to its mouth ? And who has yet reached 

 the sources of the mighty Xiger? Again, when we cast an eye down 

 the map southwards, are we notstill in ignorance of the drainage 

 and form of a prodigious extent of country between the Tanganyika 

 Lake of Burton and Speke, and the Zambesi and Shire of Livingston ? 

 Are we not at this moment most anxious to determine, by positive 

 observation, whether there exists a great series of lakes and rivers, 

 proceeding, from Tanganyika on the north, to Lake Nyassa on the 

 south ? And has not Livingston's very last effort been directed to 

 this point. If Central Africa is ever to advance in civilization, and 

 its inhabitants are to be brought into commercial relations with 

 Europe, one of the best chances of our accomplishing it will, in my 

 opinion, consist in rendering the great White Nile, a highway of in- 

 tercourse and traffic." 



ON THE EARLY MIGRATIONS OF MAN. 



In a paper on the above subject read at the last meeting of the British 

 Association by Mr. J. Crawford, the ethnologist, the author maintained 

 that the view advocated by many writers, of extensive migrations having 



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taken place in primitive times was entirely erroneous. To undertake 

 migrations even on a very moderate scale, a people must have made a 

 considerable advance in civilization. They must have learnt to produce 

 some kind of food capable of being stored, to serve them on a long jour- 

 ney, and must have attained some skill in fabricating and using weapons 

 of offence and defence. The earliest authentic records of emigrating are 



