;8o 



NA TURE 



\Au^. 31, 1876 



general for 1877 and secretary-general for 1878. The city 

 for the meeting in 1878 has not been officially determined 

 upon, but the intention of the committee is unanimously 

 to propose Versailles or Paris, in order to take advantage 

 of the interest created by the Universal Exposition. 



The 1877 meeting will take place at Havre under the pre- 

 sidency of Dr. Broca, the celebrated anthropologist ; M. 

 De Lairain, the agricultural chemist, will be the general 

 secretary. 



The recommendations to Government have been few 

 but interesting. The section of Mathematics asked the 

 Government to give Commandant Perier and his fellow- 

 workers the sum sufficient for continuing their present 

 work of triangulating France. On Monday, the 21st, a 

 lecture was delivered by M. Perier at the theatre on the 

 geological work executed under his direction by staff 

 officers, and the determination of the longitude of Puy- 

 de-D6me by electricity. The work is proceeding at the 

 present time, and a temporary astronomical observatory 

 has been established side by side with the meteorological 

 one for that purpose. 



The meteorological section asked government to organ- 

 ise a general issue of agricultural warnings (which M. 

 Leverrier is preparing to do), to establish a national 

 institute of meteorology, and to assist General Nansouty 

 in the establishment of an observatory on the Pic du 

 Midi, at an altitude exceeding by 3,000 feet the Puy-de- 

 Dome. 



The "encouragements" to scientific workers are not 

 determined by the General Meeting, but by the Council, 

 according to the wants which may be made known from 

 time to time during the year, and a report of the manner 

 in which the money has been spent is presented yearly at 

 the inaugural session of the Association. 



NORDENSKIOLUS EXPEDITION TO 

 JENISEJ, 1876 



nPHE following plan of the expedition to the "mouth of the 

 -*• Jenisej, fitted out by Messrs. Oscar Dickson, of Gothen- 

 burg, and Alexander Sibiriakoff, of St. Petersburg, has been 

 published in the Goteborgs Handels Tidning : — 



As it was desirable that the inquiries into the natural history 

 of middle and north Siberia, and specially of the Jenisej valley 

 should be recommenced during an earlier part of the year, a 

 number of the members of the expedition were obliged, in the 

 month of April, to travel by land vi& St. Petersburg, Moscow, 

 Jekaterineburg, &c., to the town of Jeniseisk, thence to proceed 

 down the river by boat to its mouth. For naturalists who had 

 before made themselves familiar with the animal and plant 

 world of northern Scandinavia, such a boat journey offered an 

 excellent opportunity for comparative studies of the natural his- 

 tory of Siberia and Scandinavia, which will not only be of great 

 moment for a knowledge of the flora and fauna both of Russia, 

 and specially of Siberia and of Scandinavia, but also, as I have 

 before pointed out, of true practical value in judging of the fit- 

 ness of middle Siberia for cultivation. The land expedition is 

 also entrusted with the task of carrying out the soundings neces- 

 sary for ascertaining whether the Jenisej is navigable, and 

 other hydrographical work, and specially of examining the 

 navigable waters in the lower course of the Jenisej between 

 Dudino and Mesenkin, in order to be able, on the arrival of the 

 vessel at the last-named place, near the mouth of Jenisej, to 

 pilot it to its proper destination, Dudino. I have given the 

 leadership of this division of the expedition to Zoology-Docent 

 Hj. Theel, from Upsala. Besides him there take part in it two 

 botanists. Rector M. Brenner, from Helsingfors, and Docent 

 H. W. Arnell, from Upsala, and two zoologists, Dr. J. Sahl- 

 berg^, from Helsingfors, and Dr. F. Trybom, from Upsala. 



It is, perhaps, already known through the newspapers that 

 these gentlemen have arrived at Jeniseisk, and commenced the 

 intended boat journey from that place to the mouth of the river. 



For the main division of the expedition, which is to make its 

 way by sea to Jenisej, I have chartered the steamer Ymer, of 

 Gothenburg. The Ymer is a strong freight vessel, built of oak, 

 of the first class in Veritas, of 400 tons burden, fully rigged 

 with sails, and having a steam-engine of 45 horse-power. 



This part of the expedition is accompanied, besides the under- 

 signed, by Docent F. Kjellman and Dr. A. Stuxberg, both 

 members of the expedition of 1875, the former also of that 

 which wintered in Mussel Bay in 1872-3. 



The expedition now departing in the Ymer is not, as will be 

 seen from the above, a commercial enterprise, but a scientific 

 expedition, whose main object is to survey the navigable waters 

 between Obi-Jeuisej and northern Norway. But the Russian 

 government having in the most accommodating way removed 

 the obstacles which threatened to arise to the bringing in of 

 goods to those regions where naturally no custom-house 

 officers are to be found, I have considered that I ought, in order 

 thereby practically to open the new commercial route, to take 

 with me a small quantity of goods suitable for north Siberia, for 

 the most part sent as samples by Swedish manufacturers, and, 

 if opportunity offers, I shall also endeavour to obtain return 

 cargo from Siberia to Europe. 



During May, June, and the greater part of July, it is 

 not possible to count on finding open water east of Novaya 

 Zemlya, and it was therefore unnecessary for the Ymer to 

 leave Sweden sooner than the beginning of July, the calculation 

 being that she would enter the Kara Sea in the end of the month 

 or the beginning of August. If all goes well the vessel ought in 

 that case to be in a few days at Mesenkin, where a meeting has 

 been fixed with Dr. Theel's party. If there be sufficient depth 

 of water the voyage is to be continued to Dudino, where the 

 cargo will be discharged and a new one taken on board. 



By the end of August the Ymer ought to be again clear to 

 return the way she came, possibly with some shore excursion 

 towards the north-east in order as far as possible without coming 

 among ice to examine the sea between the mouth of the Jenisej 

 and Cape Tscheluschkin. In the latter half of September I 

 coimt on being again in Norway. A. E. Nordenskiold 



NOTES 

 There is little to add in reference to the arrangements for the 

 Glasgow meeting of the British Association to the information 

 we published some weeks since (vol. xiv., p. 170). Everything 

 has evidently been done by the local secretaries and committee 

 to render the meeting a success so far as they are concerned. 

 The class-rooms at the University, where the sections, with one 

 exception — the Geographical — will be accommodated, have been 

 for some time in the hands of workmen, and the necessary 

 alterations will be completed in good time. The lower hall of 

 the museum, which is situated a little to the east of the north 

 or main entrance of the university, will be fitted up as the re- 

 ception-room, and in connection with this will be the post and 

 telegraph offices, general inquiry office, a stall for the disposal 

 of newspapers and scientific literature. In this portion of the 

 building there will also be located the offices and rooms of the 

 local committee, and a ladies' retiring-room. Adjoining the 

 reception-room will be the ticket-office, and from this will be the 

 entrance to the refreshment- room. The sections will be dis- 

 tributed over the university, and the local committee contemplate 

 issuing a diagram of the building, showing the class-rooms 

 allotted to each department and their situation. The arrange- 

 ments have been carried out so that the committee-rooms will 

 adjoin all the sections. At the Queen's Rooms the arrange- 

 ments are well forward for the accommodation of the Geo- 

 graphical Section. 



Most of the time of the International Congress of Orientalists 

 which meets at St. Petersburg during the first ten days of Sep- 

 tember will be devoted to researches connected with Russian 

 Asia. Of the four seances claimed for Asiatic Russia, we learn 

 from the Times the first will belong to Eastern and Western 

 Siberia, the second to Central Asia, so far as it is under Russian 

 sway, together with the independent principalities of Ouzbekis- 

 tan J in the third will be treated Caucasia, with the Crimea, and 

 the other countries of European Russia which are inhabited by 

 Asiatics ; in the fourth, Trans-Caucasia (Georgia and Armenia, 

 according to their ancient limits). In the three following seances 

 the Congress will concern itself with the rest of Asia in three 



