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 fill 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 Mahommedans, 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 down 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. 
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. 
