i8o 



NATURE 



[June 23, 1892 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



The Royal Geographical Society's soirh took place on the 

 17th inst. at the South Kensington Museum, when the guests 

 were received by the President and Council. The attendance 

 was very great. The attractions of the evening included selec- 

 tions by the Coldstream Guards band, solo and part sina;ing in 

 the lecture theatre, and an exhibition by the dioptric lantern 

 of maps and views, with explanation by Mr. H. J. Mackinder, 



Some interesting particulars as to the present state of the 

 Marshall Islands are published in the Deutsches Kolonialblatt. 

 The population is estimated at 15,000 aborigines, and about loo 

 whites. Cocoa-nuts and copra are the staple exports ; pandanus, 

 breadfruit, and arrowroot being cultivated on a small scale. 

 The natural grass is not suitable for pasture, but with the intro- 

 duction of foreign grass seed, cattle and sheep breeding may 

 become profitable. Taking into consideration the character of 

 the soil and the density of population, the future of the German 

 protectorate in the Marshall Islands is acknowledged not to be 

 very bright, although the authorities hope that it may become 

 of enhanced importance for trade with Germany. 



The National Geographic Magazine has just published an 

 account by Dr. Charles Willard Hayes of the expedition through 

 the Yukon district in 1891, conducted by Mr. Schwatka on be- 

 half of a syndicate of American newspapers. Entering by the 

 Yaku inlet, the expedition made its way by canoe, as soon as 

 the ice disappeared, up the Yaku River ; thence it crossed the 

 watershed, and continued on Lake Ahklen and the Teslin 

 River to Lewes River, a tributary of the Yukon. A traverse sur- 

 vey was made all the way, and the route laid down in a service- 

 able manner, though of course without the precision of an actual 

 survey. This district has been several times visited by prospec- 

 tors, and parts of it mapped by previous explorers ; but the ex- 

 pedition opened up, probably for the first time, the unknown 

 region extending from the Yukon to the St. Elias Mountains. 

 Across this blank, usually filled in hypothetically on maps, 

 the expedition surveyed a line of 330 miles, from Selkirk, on 

 the Yukon, to the junction of the Chittenah and Nizzenah 

 rivers. The report gives a clear summary of the topography, 

 drainage, orographic system, and geology of the region traversed. 



Prince Henry of Orleans has returned to France after 

 a difficult journey from the Upper Mekong, through the Shan 

 States and Siam, where he reached the coast at Bangkok. 



Captain W. G. Stairs, whose quiet heroism in Stanley's 

 Emin Relief Expedition was brought prominently before the 

 world two years ago, has fallen a victim to African travel. 

 He was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1863, and educated 

 at Merchiston Castle School, in Edinburgh, subsequently study- 

 ing at the Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario. After 

 his training in Canada he spent some time in New Zealand as a 

 civil engineer ; but obtaining a commission in the Royal 

 Engineers, he came to Chatham, and completed his military 

 training. When the Emin Relief Expedition was fitting out 

 in 1887, he volunteered to accompany it ; and from the first 

 he impressed Mr. Stanley as a man of exceptional qualities 

 — an opinion strengthened by the strict obedience and abso- 

 lute loyalty which distinguished him throughout the trying 

 years that followed. As the only member of the advance 

 party (Dr. Parke excepted) who had much interest in scientific 

 matters, Captain Stairs would undoubtedly have made large 

 additions to knowledge had it not been for the imperative 

 exclusiveness of his work as an officer. He was selected for the 

 best piece of geographical exploration attempted during the ex- 

 pedition — the ascent of Mount Ruwenzori. Last year Lieutenant 

 Stairs was promoted to a captaincy, but the fatal attraction 

 of Africa led to his resignation in order to accept command 

 of the Katanga Company's expedition. This Company was 

 formed in Belgium to administer and exploit the south-eastern 

 corner of the Congo Free State, in what is known as Msidi's 

 country. Stairs left Zanzibar last summer, crossed to Lake 

 Tanganyika by the familiar trade route vid Tabora, and reached 

 Mpala on October 31, after a remarkably rapid and easy 

 journey. Thence he traversed Msidi's country in the rainy 

 season, where he suffered much from fever, but succeeded in 

 reaching the Ruo on May 13, and arrived at Vicenti, near the 

 mouth of the Zambesi, on June 3. But at Chinde, just as the 

 expedition had overcome all the difficulties of the way, and 

 only waited for a passage to Zanzibar, Captain Stairs died. This 

 sad event has removed from the list of African travellers one of 

 the bravest, most prudent and modest of young explorers. 

 NO. I182, VOL. 46] 



THE MICROSCOPE'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO 

 THE EARTH'S PHYSICAL HISTORY} 



lyr EN will have forgotten much when the second half of this 

 ^^^ nineteenth century is no longer remembered. Whatever 

 may have been its faults, it has no rival in the past history of the 

 world as an epoch of scientific progress. This progress has been 

 largely due to the felicitous co-operation of the mind of the stu- 

 dent with the skill of the craftsman in the more perfect construc- 

 tion of instruments of research. By them darkness has been made 

 visible ; the opaque, translucent ; the unseen, conspicuous ; the 

 inert, sensitive ; silence, vocal. A thousand methods of experi- 

 ment, tests of the most delicate nature, have been devised, so that 

 vague conjecture has been replaced by exact knowledge, and 

 hypothesis by demonstration. In such an epoch it may seem a 

 little fanciful to select any one term of years as exception- 

 ally fruitful ; but it is remarkable that in the first decade 

 of this half- century, science was enriched by three contribu- 

 tions, each of which has led to consequences of far-reaching 

 import. In 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace 

 announced simultaneously the conclusions as to the origin 

 of species at which they had independently arrived, and the 

 well-known book by the former author appeared in the follow- 

 ing year. They thus formulated the results of protracted 

 investigations and patient experiments with the simpler appli- 

 ances of earlier days. They subjected, more strictly than ever 

 before, the facts of nature to an inductive treatment, and thus 

 lent a new impulse to biological science. Their hypothesis 

 gave a definite aim to the researches of students, and kindled 

 an unquenchable flame of intellectual activity. In i860, Bunsen 

 and Kirchoff announced the results of applying the spectroscope 

 to problems in chemical analysis. By means of this instrument 

 not only have investigations attained a precision hitherto im- 

 possible, but also the student, no longer cribbed, cabined, and 

 confined, to the limits of the earth, can question the stars in 

 their courses, and bid nebulae and comets reveal the secrets of 

 their history. Lastly^though the problem be in a humbler 

 sphere, dealing with neither the immensities of stellar physics 

 nor the mystery of life — Henry Clifton Sorby, in 1856, described 

 the results of microscopic investigations into the structures of 

 minerals and rocks. Strictly speaking, indeed, the method was 

 not wholly novel. So long since as 1827, William Nicol, of 

 Edinburgh, had contrived to make sections of fossil wood 

 sufficiently thin for examination under the microscope ; but the 

 device, so far as I know, had not been generally applied, or its 

 wide possibilities apprehended. 



You have heard in this place on former occasions of the 

 triumphs of the spectroscope in extra-terrestrial space ; of the 

 revelations of the microscope in regard to the least and lowest 

 forms of life ; I have ventured to ask your attention to-day to 

 the work of that instrument in a humbler and more limited field 

 — the constitution and history of the earth's crust. My task is 

 beset with difficulties. Did I address myself to experts, these 

 would be but a small portion of my audience ; if 1 speak to the 

 majority, it will be hard to make intelligible a subject bristling 

 with technicalities. Moreover, as this building is so ill-suited 

 for the usual methods of illustration, I have decided to dispense 

 with diagrams or lantern slides, and will try to tell, in the 

 plainest language at my command, the conclusions as to the 

 genesis of rocks and the earlier history of the earth to which the 

 researches of the last few years seem to be tending. 



I have excluded from my story investigations which bear upon 

 the biology of the past, though the work of the microscope in 

 this field has not been less fruitful or interesting, because these 

 are more widely known. Moreover, they have not specially 

 engaged my attention, and there is, I believe, an expectation 

 amounting to an unwritten law, that whoever has the honour to 

 occupy my present position should be so far egotistical as to talk 

 of the particular plot, however small it may be, on which he has 

 laboured in the garden of science. So I will crave the 

 indulgence of the few experts present, and the patience of 

 the majority of my audience, while I try to tell the story of 

 microscopical research into the history of the earth's crust. 



Twenty years ago, I believe, not half that number of geo- 

 logists in the British Isles made any real use of the microscope. 

 Now they may be counted by scores, not only in the United 

 Kingdom, but also in every civilized land. Obviously in a 

 science so new, in a research which is extending so rapidly, 



I The Rede Lecture for 1892, 'delivered before the University of Cam- 

 bridge, by T. G. Bonney, Sc.D., F.R.S. 



