60 HOPKINS. [April 14, 1856. 



circulation is, as has been said, very difficult ; it is yet " an overwhelming 

 mass of detail, which we have not sufficient light to penetrate sufficiently." 



Mr. Galton objected to certain data, regarding South Africa, upon which 

 Mr. Hopkins had argued. He described that continent, up to the 6th degree 

 of S. lat., as being low and arid, whereas the fact is the very reverse. The 

 height of the • table-land of South Africa was great: at Lake Ngami it was 

 3800 feet, and at the sources of the river that fed it from the north it was neces- 

 sarily greater ; in Damara-land it far exceeded 4000 feet. Again, the Karri- 

 harri desert and those portions which lie S. of a line joining Delagoa Bay and 

 Great Fish Bay are undoubtedly arid, but, to the northward of that line, such 

 enormous quantities of rain fall that the country is at times impassable. 

 Lobale and the Borotse Valley are deluged with water, and their villages are 

 built upon mounds to preserve them from floods. The streams of different 

 water-sheds are described as interlacing, and, even in Damara-land, the 

 country suffers more from excessive alternations of seasons than from actual 

 drought. Thus, during a rainy season, an hippopotamus has actually travelled 

 overland from Omanbonde to the Swakop, across a tract which, in the dry 

 time of the year, was utterly destitute of water except in a few wells and 

 scanty springs. Farther to the N. we find the great lake Nyassi, to which so 

 much attention has been recently drawn ; and, he would add, in corroboration 

 of its extent, and especially of the great bend from E, to W. which Mr. Erhardt 

 believes to exist, and which appears upon his map, that in a route of Arab 

 traders * across the continent, out of about 100 stages, whose name they record, 

 17 have the prefix of Niassa, by which we may roughly infer that that propor- 

 tion of their entire route from E. to W. lay alongside this bend of the lake. 



Mr. Hopkins explained that he had stated in his paper that South Africa 

 was not so dry as Patagonia or Peru, and that in this respect its character was 

 not so strongly marked as that of the other continents of the S. hemisphere. 

 He thought that an elevation of 2000 feet, or even 4000 feet, for the table- 

 land, would not be sufficient to arrest the vapour so as to produce a large 

 amount of condensati(>n ; much of it, therefore, passed on to the mountains 

 near the equator, which are, say, 15,000 feet high. 



6. Me moval of Pitcairn Islanders. 

 The President (Rear-Adm. Beechey) remarked upon the interest 

 which the English have taken in these islanders, and upon their recent 

 removal to Norfolk Island. He thought they would exercise a most 

 beneficial influence upon the inhabitants of the neighbouring islands of 

 the Pacific, who have but recently, if at all, emerged from a state of 

 barbarism and even of cannibalism, j" 



The Bishop of Oxford, f.r.g.s., quite agreed with the President as to the great 

 importance of this removal of these people to Norfolk Island, and trusted that 

 it might be productive of all the good he anticipated. He called attention to 

 the remarkable manner in which the work of self-purification had proceeded 

 among them, although all external influences seemed adverse. Their chastity, 

 and their strictness with regard to property, were points worthy of the deepest 

 admiration, subjected as they had always been to the evil influences arising 

 from ships' crews landing on their island. Seeing that they had gone on 

 so favourably under such adverse circumstances, it could not but be hoped 

 that they would exercise a very beneficial effect upon others around them, 

 when they were countenanced and helped by the British Government. By 



* See p. 75. t See p. 77. 



