552 Meeting of the British Association. [ Oct., 
GroarapHy AND Eruyotocy. (Section E.) 
The new arrangement decreed by the Council of the Association 
last year, whereby the science of Man was referred to the Natural 
History Section and powers given to that Section for the constitution 
of a department of Anthropology, has not yet had the effect of 
lessening the number of papers usually read in the Section of Geo- 
graphy and Ethnology. By the new arrangement, all papers 
treating of the Zoological characters, origin, and primitive history 
of man are, or ought to be, discarded from the Section which treats 
of pure Ethnology, and those papers only admitted which describe 
the observations of travellers on the tribes of distant countries, 
chiefly in their geographical relations. One or two papers however 
were read which the Committee of the Section ought, perhaps, not 
to have admitted. The Section sat six days, and several papers on 
the programme were left at the last unread. 
A trio of famous travellers constituted the chief attraction of the 
meeting; the names of Baker, Palgrave, and Du Chaillu on the 
lists of authors of papers drawing together very large audiences. 
It was computed that 1,200 people were assembled to hear (or, 
perhaps, rather to see) the gorilla hero; the audiences drawn by 
Sir Samuel Baker and Mr. Palgrave being somewhat inferior in 
numbers. The other geographical papers were much inferior in 
popular interest to the discourses of these three travellers, but 
there were several of much scientific value and geographical novelty. 
We will now proceed to give a sketch of the principal subjects brought 
before the Section. 
Sir Samuel Baker commenced the scientific work of the Section, 
on Thursday the 23rd, by a discourse (it was not a written paper) 
on the “ Relations of the Abyssinian Tributaries of the Nile and 
the Equatorial Lakes to the Inundations and Fertility of Egypt.” 
Sir Samuel showed himself to be a ready speaker, and the skilful 
way in which he combined graphic description and amusing narra- 
tive with closely-reasoned argument, produced a great effect on his 
audience. His object was to show, from his own observations, that 
the annual inundations and fertilizing mud of the lower Nile Valley 
were produced solely by those tributaries of the great river which 
have their rise in Abyssinia, and that the outflow from the great 
lakes near the Equator had simply the effect of keeping up the 
supply of water when the Abyssinian floods ceased in the dry season. 
He spent twelve months, from June 1861 to June 1862, in explor- 
ing the Abyssinian streams, ascending the banks of the Atbara, and 
from its upper waters crossing the tributary rivers till he reached 
the Blue Nile, down which he travelled to Khartum. He described 
the condition of the Atbara when he first reached its banks, at the 
close of the dry season. The river is the last tributary which the 
