1899] NEWS 79 



Each bottle contains a printed card, and it is hoped that any one who picks up 

 one of these bottles will take out the card and till up the blanks reserved for 

 the place and date of finding, name and place if found on the shore, latitude 

 and longitude if found on the sea, and send it to Professor Gilson. 



A preliminary report upon the results of the scientific expedition to the 

 island of Socotra has been issued by Mr. Henry O. Forbes, Director of Museums 

 to the Liverpool Corporation, who, under the auspices of the Royal and Royal 

 Geographical Societies of London, and of the British Association, and in con- 

 junction with Mr. W. R. Ogilvie Grant, representing the British Museum, 

 undertook the investigation of the natural history of the island. The expedi- 

 tion occupied a period of about six months, and the investigations were conducted 

 amid considerable difficulties. At one time all the members of the party were 

 laid down by a pernicious form of malaria, and they also suffered from frequent 

 attacks of fever. The party were fortunate in discovering many new species of 

 plants and animals, and a valuable collection has been brought home. Accord- 

 ing to the report the Socotrians are only poorly civilised Mahommeclans, living 

 in caves or rude cyclopean huts, and possessing but few utensils, implements, or 

 ornaments, and no weapons. The ethnographical collection is consequently 

 small. The plant specimens have been handed to a well-known student of the 

 flora of Socotra, Professor I. Bayley Balfour of Edinburgh University, who 

 describes them as of high scientific interest, and of great commercial value. 

 The cultivation of some is being undertaken in the Royal Botanic Garden at 

 Edinburgh. The report concludes by congratulating Liverpool on being the 

 first provincial Corporation to further the advancement and increase of know- 

 ledge by actively sharing in the investigation of unknown regions. 



The Indian Marine Service steamer, the Investigator, has recently closed a 

 season of surveying, with important results both for navigation and zoology. 

 The Investigator, starting from the Moulmein river in Burma last January, 

 steadily surveyed — and her Surgeon-Naturalist, Captain Anderson, trawled — 

 across the bay to the northern end of the great Andaman, and fixed the position 

 of the island for the first time. Thence the longitudinal position of Port Blair, 

 the capital of the penal settlement of the Government of India, was fixed by 

 running a meridian distance to Double Island, off Burma. When at work in 

 the Middle Straits between the two largest islands, the ship's staff had the 

 assistance of forty tamed Andamanese pigmies against their as yet savage 

 countrymen, who of late have killed several of the Indian convicts near Port 

 Blair with poisoned arrows. The fifteen islands in the three groups of the 

 Cocos, four Andamans and nine Nicobars, will henceforth be a help instead of 

 a danger to the busy mercantile marine plying between Calcutta, Madras, 

 Burma, and the Straits Settlements. The deep-sea trawl went clown in some 

 cases from 480 to 800 fathoms, from which Dr. Anderson brought up not a 

 few valuable additions to his collections. 



It is reported that the Duke of Abruzzi, the nephew of King Humbert, has 

 started for Franz Josef Land, intending to penetrate as far as possible by ship, 

 and then to make a rush for the Pole with sleighs. 



'O* 



Early in May a party of scientific men started for Alaska as the guests of 

 Mr. Edward H. Harriman, of New York. Among those taking part in the 

 expedition are Prof. Prichard, of the United States Coast Survey ; Prof. Coville, 

 of the Department of Agriculture ; Prof. C. Hart Merriam, of the Smithsonian 

 Institution ; and Prof. William Trelease, of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. 

 The American Museum of Natural History is represented by Frank Chapman and 

 John Rowley, the Field Columbian Museum by Daniel G. Elliott, Amherst 

 College by Prof. Emerson, Leland Stanford University by Prof. Gilbert. 

 Messrs. R. Swain Gifford and Louis Agassiz Fuertes will go with the expedition 

 as artists. 



