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\_Atigust 30, 1888 



to furnish general instruction to as large a number as will favour 

 me with their attention ; and also to have always round me two 

 or three whom we may style specialists. I can only say that I 

 now see a very fair prospect of obtaining the latter. It may be 

 well to place on record my humble opinion, that the best pre- 

 liminary training for a geographical specialist is sound grounding 

 in general science, and superadded to this an elementary know- 

 ledge of history. I have found by experience that it is exceed- 

 ingly hard to give the necessary scientific knowledge to an 

 historian" — a somewhat hard saying for the historians. In the 

 coming academical year the lectures will be on the physical 

 geography of continents, the geography of the British Isles, and 

 the historical geography of North America. As Extension 

 Lecturer, Mr. Mackinder has delivered 102 lectures on geo- 

 graphy and physiography at various towns throughout the 

 country. 



In the August number of the Scottish Geographical Magazine, 

 Mr. Forbes reports on his attempts to reach the Owen Stanley 

 Peak, and incidentally describes the moving adventures by 

 flood and field of his last expedition. Although not successful, 

 owing to more than one unexpected mishap, in reaching his 

 goal, he claims that the results accomplished so far. have not 

 been few or inconsiderable. Large additions have been made to 

 botanical and some to zoological science ; an extensive series 

 of meteorological observations has been tabulated, and a tract 

 of country has been mapped for the first time. Mr. Ravenstein 

 briefly describes the recent explorations in the territories of the 

 African Lakes Company between Nyassa and Tanganyika. Both 

 these papers are accompanied by excellent maps. Archdeacon 

 Maples, of the Universities Mission to Central Africa, gives a 

 detailed account of Lukoma, the principal island in Lake 

 Nyassa, which, although only \\ miles long by 2\ broad, has 

 a population of 2500, or about 220 to the square mile, in 

 consequence of its comparative freedom from war. " Ula," or 

 witchcraft, of the kin 1 described by Mr. Rider Haggard with 

 such graphic force in one of his earlier works, prevails, and is a 

 curse to the island. Herr Metzger contributes a most interesting 

 paper on the scientific work lately done in the Dutch East Indies, 

 based mainly on recent Government publications and those of 

 various learned Societies in Holland and Java. 



The current number of the Deutsche. Geographische Blatter 

 contains two papers of considerable geographical and ethno- 

 logical interest. The fbst, by Herr August Fitzau, is devoted to 

 the little-known region of the north-west African seaboard 

 between Morocco and the Senegal River. After an historical 

 survey of the various attempts made to found European settle- 

 ments in this region, the writer describes in deta"il the sections of 

 the coast between Agadir and Cape Juby, and thence to Saint 

 Louis. He then deals with the Western Sahara in general, and 

 especially with the ethnological relations of the regions south of 

 the Atlas and north of the Senegal River, arriving at the general 

 conclusion that, although Arabic has become the dominant 

 language, the old Berber or Hamitic is still the prevailing 

 ethnical element, variously modified by Semitic and Negro 

 influences. In the second paper the distinguished traveller and 

 ethnologist, Dr. O. Finsch, gives a sympathetic and permanently 

 valuable account of the life and work of the late Mikluho- 

 Maclay, to wdiom anthropological science is so much indebted 

 for his profound studies of the Malayan, Papuan, Negrito, 

 Melanesian, and Australian races. The memoir is very com- 

 plete, including a detailed account of the naturalist's travels with 

 their scientific results, his vast ethnological collections and 

 the zoological stations founded by him, and concluding with 

 a full descriptive catalogue of his numerous geographical, 

 anthropological, and zoological writings. 



The July number of the Bollettino of the Italian Geographical 

 Society is mainly occupied wiih Leonardo Fea's recent explora- 

 tions in Tenasserim. The chief points visited were the curious 

 "Farm Caves" in the M lulmein district, and Mount Mulai 

 (Moolaee) in the Dona Range. This peak, culminating paint of 

 Tenasserim (6300 feet), was reached and ascended to its summit 

 after a journey full of difficulties and hardships, which followed 

 the course of the Jeeayng-Myit and its great southern tributary, 

 the Unduro, as far as Meetan in 46 N., 98 30' E. From 

 Meetan the route struck north to Tagata and Mulai through the 

 hilly territory of the little-known Ayaeen Karens. Of this 

 tribe Signor Fea gives an interesting account, and he was also 

 successful in securing a large zoological c Election, including 

 450 skins of birds, over 400 mammals, many hundred reptiles, 

 batrachians, and fishes, besides numerous insects, spiders, 



mollusks, and other small animals. These treasures go to enrich 

 the valuable zoological materials already brought together in the 

 Natural History Museum founded at Genoa by the Marquis 

 Giacomo Doria. The paper is accompanied by a map of the 

 region explored, as well as by several original sketches by the 

 naturalist himself. The Marquis Doria has added a useful list 

 of the various memoirs that have appeared in connection with 

 Signor Fea's geographical and biological researches in Burmah 

 during the last four years. 



The most important amongst recent explorations in Indo- 

 China are those undertaken by the Vice-Consul for France at 

 Luang Prabang, the capital of an outlying region of Siam of the 

 same name, and itself situated on the Mekong. M. Pavie, the 

 official in question, has since succeeded in reaching Tonquin from 

 this place by two different routes, the most practicable apparently 

 being that to the north-east along the valley of the Namseng, 

 a tributary of the Mekong, and then across the mountains forming 

 the watershed of the Mekong and Songkoi, or Red River of 

 Tonquin, to the valley of Nam Tay or Black River, dawn which 

 M. Pavie proceeded to Sontay and Hanoi. 



At a recent meeting of the Swedish Geographical and 

 Anthropological Society, Baron H. von Schwerin gave an 

 account of his late expedition to the Congo and West Africa, 

 extending over a period of nearly two years, and under- 

 taken at the instance of the Swedish Government. He had 

 proceeded in a steamer as far up the Congo as Stanley 

 Falls, and then up the Kassai, the principal tributary 

 of the former. Next he had, in the company of his 

 countryman, Lieut. C. Hakansson, explored the basin of the 

 Inkissi, another tributary of the Congo, and from Banana made 

 an excursion into the land of the Mushirongi, south of the 

 mouth of the river, a country never hitherto visited by any 

 European. A f ter a journey to Angola and Mossamedes, on the 

 west coast, a journey performed in a sailing-vessel, and ex- 

 tending as far north as Cape Negro, he made an excursion into 

 the lands of Kakongo and Kabinda, situated to the north of the 

 mouth of the Congo, which had also hitherto been considered 

 closed to Europeans. The heat on the Congo was not so 

 excessive as was generally imagined. A temperature above 

 35° C. was rare, but what were particularly enervating and 

 exhausting were the steadiness of the high temperature and the 

 total absence of cooling breezes, whether in the shade or at 

 night, and, more than either, the exce sive humidity of the air. 

 He considered the climate of the Congo one of the healthiest in 

 Africa. Finally, Dr. Schwerin gave an account of his discovery 

 on the promontory south of the Congo River of the remains of 

 the marble pillar raised there in 1484 by Diego Cam in com- 

 memoration of the discovery of this mighty river, and destroyed 

 by the Dutch in the sixteenth century. The speaker also 

 exhibited a large and valuable collection of scientific objects 

 gathered in Africa. 



NOTES ON METEORITES. 



I. 



Their Fall and Physical Characteristics. 



PERUSAL of the Chinese annals — which reach back to the 

 year 644 before our era, and are still models of patient 

 record — or of the mucn more irregular and less complete ones of 

 the Western world, shows in the most definite manner that 

 since the very commencement of human history, from time to 

 time falls of bodies on to the earth from external space have been 

 noticed. Biot has traced in Ma-tuan-lin the record of sixteen 

 falls from the date before mentioned to A. D. 333. 



The earliest fall recorded in Europe, however, transcends in 

 antiquity anything the Chinese can claim, dating as it does from 

 1478 B.C. It happened in Crete, but the record is much more 

 doubtful than that of the falls in 705 and 654 B.C., noted, the 

 first by Plutarch, and the second by Livy. 



But in 466 B.C. occurred a fall at A egos Potamos, in Thrace, 

 concerning which the Chronicles of the Parian marbles, Plutarch, 

 and Pliny all give us information. It was of the size of two 

 mill-stones, and equal in weight to a full waggon-load. 1 Later, 

 there fell in Phry^ia, in about the year 2-4 B.C., a stone famous 

 through long ages, which was preserved there for many genera- 

 tions. It was described as " a black stone, in the figure of a 

 cone, circular below and ending in an apex above." It was 

 worshipped by the ancients as Cybele, the mother of the gods, 

 1 Humboldt, " Cosmos," Otte's translation, vol. i. p. 103. 



A 



