88 NATURAL SCIENCE [August 
he worked by way of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca rivers to the 
Rocky 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 EUROPE 
Ir is ditticult 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 
eravel, six metres below the surface, on the river bank of the Olt 
at Milcovul-de-jos, near Slatina, Roumania (Anwarulu Mus. Geol., 
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 alutensis. 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. Liitken, with 
a recent portrait. 
