Scientific IntelUgtnct. — Geology, 103 



upon a late journey into the interior of Brazil, he had for the first time 

 met with human bones, in conjunction with the bones of acknowledged 

 extinct animals, which must be of an extraordinary antiquity, perhaps 

 the oldest bones that have ever been found ; for they are in part petri- 

 fied, and in their present condition altogether correspond with those of 

 the extinct animals, in connection with which they were found ! They 

 will, he observes, throw a light on the nature of the inhabitants of this 

 part of South America, in times which go much farther back than our 

 knowledge of this part of the world. The formation of the cranium is 

 extraordinary, inasmuch as the forehead does not rise in the same plane 

 with the face, but forms a considerable angle, by which peculiarity they 

 differ from all craniunis of living races of men, and resemble the de- 

 pressed heads represented in the ancient drawings of the Mexicans. In 

 connection with the extraordinary bones, was found a hemispherical- 

 shaped stone, quite polished on the under surface, which had evidently 

 been used for rubbing. — Athenauni, No. 698, March 13. 1841. 



The Source of the River Oxus» — After quitting the surface of the 

 river, we travelled about an hour along its right bank, and then as- 

 cended a lowhill, which apparently bounded the valley to the eastward ; 

 on surmounting this, at five o'clock in the afternoon of the 19th of 

 February 1838, we stood, to use a native expression, upon the Bam-i- 

 Duniah, or '' Roof of the world," while before us lay stretched a noble 

 but frozen sheet of water, from whose western end issued the infant 

 river Oxus. This fine lake lies in the form of a crescent, about four- 

 teen miles long from east to west, by an average breadth of one mile. 

 On three sides it is bordered by swelling hills, about 500 feet high, 

 whilst along its soutliern bank they rise into mountains 3500 feet above 

 the lake, or 19,000 above the sea, and covered with perpetual snow, 

 from which never failing source the lake is supplied. From observations 

 at the western end, I found the latitude to be 37° 27' north by mer. 

 alt. of the sun, and longitude 73° 40' east by protraction from Langer 

 Kish, where the last set of chronometric observations had been obtained; 

 its elevation, measured by the temperature of boiling water, is 15,600, 

 feet — as my thermometer marked 184*^ Fahrenheit. The temperature 

 of the water below the ice was 32° — the freezing point. 



This, then, is the position of the sources of this celebrated river, 

 which, after a course of upwards of a thousand miles in a direction gene- 

 rally north-west, falls into the southern end of the Sea of Aral. As I 

 had the good fortune to be the first European who in later times had 

 succeeded in reaching the sources of this river, and as, shortly before set- 

 ting out on my journey, we had received the news of her gracious 

 Majesty's accession to the throne, I was much tempted to apply the 



VOL. XXXI. NO. LXI. JULY 1841. N 



