(A PROZEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
In his report of his discovery of the north magnetic pole in 
1831, he says, “The north end of the horizontal needle pointed 
north 57° W.; magnetic dip had increased to 89° 41’ N.; these 
observations enabled me to determine which way we should pro- 
ceed, and the distance that lay between us and the great object 
we had in view.” On the Ist June, 1831, he camped in latitude 
70° 5’ 57” N. and longitude 96° 46’ 45” W., the dip was 89° 59, or 
within one minute of the vertical, the horizontal needles being . 
perfectly inactive. 
Deep-sea soundings will occupy much attention, and it will 
be curious to find that great depressions in the ocean-bottom are 
found in connection with such volcanic action as must from time 
to time, occur in the vicinity of such volcanoes as Mount Erebus, 
of 12,000 feet elevation, and Mount Terror of 7,000 feet. 
Whenever the proposed expedition from England is fitted out, 
and gets away upon its field of operation, the greatest interest in 
it will be taken by all the Australasian Colonies, not from any 
expected commercial advantages so much to be gained as from an 
earnest regret that the South Polar or Antarctic Circle should 
exhibit so large a blank, in a geographical point of view, as it 
does. 
No. 7.—IHE DISCOVERY OF NEW GUINEA BY 
ANTONIO DE ABREU. 
By J. R. McCrymont, M.A. 
(Read Wednesday, Janwary 12, 1898.) 
THE various methods of teaching and of studying geography may 
be described as—Pictorial, Descriptive, or Historical. 
The Pictorial method is that which teaches by means of maps— 
more or less highly conventionalised representations of the surface 
and outlines of the earth. Many early maps, between the twelfth 
and the sixteenth centuries, were mere mnemonic diagrams. A. 
circle with a few radii represented the distribution of land and 
water. Sometimes the zones were named, at other times the 
known continents. ‘Then the outlines of the known continents 
were drawn, more or less vaguely. Contemporaneously with these 
mappemondes there appear, in the fourteenth century, portulani, 
or hydrographic charts of a high degree of excellence, called forth 
by the requirements of an extending commerce. ‘These are prin- 
cipally charts of the Mediterranean, and amongst them those of 
Pietro Vicente, 1311, and of Dulcert, 1339, already presage the 
highest attainments of modern hydrography. 
