88 NATURAL SCIENCE [August 



he worked by way of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca rivers to the 

 Kocky Mountains, which he crossed between Mounts Brown and 

 Hooker, and then descended the Columbia river to Fort Colville. 

 He arrived at this place in May 1851. The next two years were 

 spent in exploring the coast region between the Fraser river and 

 San Francisco. Collections were made on Mount Baker, the Cascade 

 Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and other ranges in Southern Oregon 

 and California, and along many of the river valleys. Several collec- 

 tions were sent to Edinburgh, the last being those made in 1853, 

 when his term of employment by the association ceased, the original 

 contract being for three years' service. A letter to Andrew Murray 

 from a brother in San Francisco, dated May 1854, gives the last 

 information we have of a hard-working and enthusiastic but ill-fated 

 botanist. He planned an expedition to Fort Yuma on the Gila 

 river in Colorado, from which he never returned, and there seems 

 little doubt that he perished of thirst in the desert. 



The Camel in Eueope 



It is difficult to determine the natural geographical distribution of 

 an animal which has been so long domesticated as the camel. Dis- 

 coveries of its remains in surface-deposits need to be carefully 

 investigated by competent geologists before they can be accepted 

 as actual fossils, not as bones merely buried by man. Great interest 

 therefore attaches to an announcement by Dr G. Stefanescu, the 

 eminent Roumanian geologist, of the discovery of two portions of 

 the mandible of a species of Camelus in an undoubted Quaternary 

 gravel, six metres below the surface, on the river bank of the Olt 

 at Milcovul-de-jos, near Slatina, Roumania {Anuandu Mus. Gcol., 

 Bucharest, 1895). Dr Stefanescu disinterred the specimens him- 

 self, and there can be no doubt as to their geological age. He 

 regards the species to which they belong as new, and names it 

 Camelus cdutensis. We believe that there are similar fragments 

 from the Volga basin in the collection of Prof. A. Rosenberg of 

 Dorpat (Jurjeff), but we are not aware whether any account of 

 these has been published. 



Steenstrup 



We regret to record the death of the doyen of Danish zoologists, the 

 veteran Prof. Steenstrup. We hope next month to publish a 

 short account of his life and work by Prof. Chr. F. Ltitken, with 

 a recent portrait. 



