464 Chronicles of Science. | July, 
in New Zealand, and the disturbing elements of gold digging in the 
other settlements of Australia, attracts considerable notice. We 
shall have occasion to speak at a later period of the surveys conducted 
by the governor of this colony. The settlers seem anxious to open out 
all the means of communication that they can. There is a design for 
a mail to Batavia to join the Dutch here. The coast will soon be 
defended by several lighthouses. The climate seems to afford great 
relief to persons afflicted with chest diseases, and the dugong oil is as 
efficacious a remedy as that of the cod liver. The cultivation of 
cotton is making a considerable advance, and bids fair in time to 
succeed to the now lost Sea Islands. Tobacco, and other productions 
of both temperate and torrid zones, flourish, and the only problem 
that remains to be solved is how far north the European can live with 
impunity. The Society of Arts at home has offered a prize for the 
discovery and working of a new coal mine in Australia. This has 
afforded much amusement to the colonists. They have no lack of 
mines, and mines in convenient localities; but the competition is so 
great that the chief difficulty is to find a market for the coal procured. 
Queensland promises in a few years to become one of the most 
flourishing of colonies dependent upon this empire. 
The African explorers have been of late pressing in upon the 
unknown central region from all sides. Some hindrances seem likely 
to stop their very rapid progress. Dr. Kirk, who was attached to 
Dr. Livingstone’s party, has returned, and Dr. Livingstone himself, the 
report of whose death has proved untrue, is on his way to Bombay, 
vid Mozambique and Zanzibar, hoping at the former place to sell his 
little steamer, the ‘Lady Nyassa.’ Bishop Tozer, who was settled 
on the Zambesi, appears to mect with less success than he had antici- 
pated, in consequence of the disturbed state of the country, and 
recommendations are being forwarded to him to retire to the frontier 
land to the north of the Zulu land. His object is to advance towards 
the interior, and his route need not be confined to any river or line of 
march. M. Jules Gérard has met with a repulse, too, from the 
King of Dahomey. He was indiscreet enough to write to ‘ The Times’ 
an account of the custom on the ascent of the present monarch to the 
throne, and in consequence he has been politely requested to retire 
from the kingdom which he had begun to describe. 
Dahomey itself has suffered a remarkable reverse at the hands of 
the Egbas of Abeokuta, who were so well described in Captain R. F. 
Barton’s book on that subject, published last year. The old grudge 
which the traveller mentioned as having been nourished for more than 
ten years, has at last broken out into active warfare. With troops to the 
number, it is said, of 10,000, of which a large portion were Amazons, 
he attacked the Aro gate of the extensive fortified enclosure of Egba 
villages, that go by the name of Abeokuta, Under-the-Stone, a con- 
federation of towns that remind us not only of the four or five hills 
that were first enclosed to make up Rome with its allied tribes, but 
also gives an explanation of some of those peculiar plural names that 
many Grecian towns possessed. Niebuhr found an explanation of 
Janus Biceps in a town lying inland on the northern coast of Africa ; 
