98 Dr. Beke on the Sources of the Nile. 



of the siphon is slopped, the water in the tube b remaining 

 at just sufficient height to excUide the air from the interior of 

 the reservoir. 



This simple apparatus may be affixed to am/ convenient 

 vessel having an aperture at the bottom ; all other openings 

 being of course closed, so as to prevent the ingress of air ex- 

 cept by the tube b. A common salt glaze earthenware wash- 

 ing-bottle, or a Griffin's gas-holder, will be found to answer 

 the purpose perfectly. 



Glasgow College Laboratory, 

 July 6, 1849. 



XIV. 0?i the Sources of' the Nile ; being an attempt to assign 

 the limits of the Basin of that River. By Charles T. Beke, 

 Esq., Ph.b, F.S.A. Sfc* 



IN treating of the sources of the Nile, it is not intended to 

 regard any particular source or spring as being more 

 especially and exclusively the true head of that river. It will 

 not even be discussed whether this or that large branch of the 

 river should be considered to be the principal one. Such ques- 

 tions at the outset are not likely to lead to any satisfactory 

 result. Our object must be in the first place to determine the 

 entire limits of the basin of the river ; we have next to ascer- 

 tain what principal arms unite to form the main stream ; we 

 must then trace to their heads the several smaller streams 

 which form those branches ; and when we have succeeded in all 

 these points, we shall then — but not before — be competent to 

 decide which of these numerous ramifications has the fairest 

 claim to be regarded as the true source of the Nile. 



It may however be objected, and not without a show of 

 reason, that though this is the theoretical method of investi- 

 gating the subject, yet the question is susceptible of a more 

 practical solution; — that, as in the case of most other rivers, 

 there is some particular stream which by common consent is 

 looked on as the soicrce of the Nile, and this without regard to 

 its being actually the head of the longest or the largest branch. 

 Were this really the case, we should in one sense be bound 

 to acquiesce in the recognition of such a source, even though 

 it might not possess all the attributes of the true head of 

 the river. But the fact is not so. The Abai, the river 

 of Abessinia, whose source was visited and described by 

 the Portuguese Jesuits in the beginning of the seventeenth 



• Communicated bv the Syro-Egyptian Society of London, having been 

 read before that Society on the 9th of January 1849. 



