196 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Sept. 5, 18b4. 



along distances which seem enornoous when counted by 

 miles, he can yet detect no change whatever in the aspect 

 of the several constellations. 



(To ie continued.) 



AN ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION 



(GEOGRAPHICAL SECTION), AT MONTREAL, 1884. 

 By General Sir J. H. Lefrot, R.A., F.RS., Ac. 



THE subjoined extracts from General Lefroy's very able 

 address comprise those portions of it possessing the 

 greatest interest for the ordinary reader, as contradis- 

 tinguished from the professional geographer pure and 

 simple : — 



It is scarcely necessary to do more than allude here to 

 the intimate relations between geography and geology. The 

 changes on the earth's surface etfected within historical 

 times by the operation of geological causes, and enumerated 

 in geological books, are far more numerous and generally 

 distributed than most persons are aware of ; and they are by 

 no means confined to sea-coasts, although the presence of a 

 natural datum in the level of the sea makes them more ob- 

 served there. A recent German writer. Dr. Hahn, has enume- 

 rated ninety-sbt; more or less extensive tracts known to be 

 rising or sinking. We owe to Mr. R. A. Peacock the 

 accumulation of abundant evidence that the island of 

 Jersey had no existence in Ptolemy's time, and probably 

 was not wholly cut ofl' from the continent before the fourth 

 or fifth century. Mr. A. Howarth has collected similar 

 pi oofs as to the Arctic regions; and every fresh discovery 

 adds to the number. Thus the gallant, ill-fated De Long, a 

 name not to be mentioned without homage to heroic courage 

 and almost superhuman endurance, found evidence that 

 Bennett Island has risen a hundred feet in quite recent 

 times. Nordenskjold found the remains of whales, 

 evidently killed by the early Dutch fishers on elevated 

 terraces on Martin's Island. The recent conclusion of Pro- 

 fessor Hull, that the land between Suez and the Bitter 

 Lakes has risen since the Exodus, throws fresli light on the 

 Mosaic account of that great event ; and to go still further 

 south, we learn from the Indian survey that it is " almost 

 certain " that the mean sea-level at Madras is a foot lower, 

 i.e., the land is afoot higher, than it was sixty years ago. 

 If I do not refer to the changes on the west side of Hudson's 

 Bay, for a distance of at least 600 miles, it is only because 

 I presume that the researches of Dr. Robert Bell are too 

 well known here to require it. Any of my hearers who may 

 have visited Bermuda are aware that so greatly has that 

 island subsided, that great hangings of stalactite, unbroken, 

 may be found dipping many feet into the sea, or at all events, 

 into salt-water pools standing at the same level, and we have 

 no reason to suppose the sinking to have come to an end. 

 We learn from the Chinese annals that the so-called Hot 

 Lake Issyk-kul, of Turkestan, was formed by some convul- 

 sion of nature about 160 years ago, and there seems no good 

 reason to reject the Japanese legend that Fusiyama itself 

 was suddenly thrown up in the third century before our 

 era (b c. 286). These are but illustrations of the assertion 

 I began with, that geography and geology are very nearly 

 connected, and it would be equally easy to show on how 

 many points we touch the domain of botany and natural 

 history. The flight of birds has often guided navigators 

 to undiscovered lands. Nordenskjold went so far as to 



infer the existence of " vast tracts, with high mountains, 

 with valleys filled with glaciers, and with precipitous 

 peaks " between Wrangel Land and the American shores 

 of the Polar Sea, from no other sign than the multitudes of 

 Vtirds winging their way northward in the spring of lb79, 

 from the Vega's winter quarters. The walrus-hunters 

 of Spitzbergen drew the same conclusion in a previous 

 voyage from the flight of birds toward the Pole from the 

 European side. Certainly no traveller in the more northern 

 latitudes of this continent in the autumn can fail to reflect 

 on the ceaseless circulation of the tide of life in the beau- 

 tiful harmony of nature, when he finds that he can scarcely 

 raise his eyes from his book at any moment, or direct them 

 to any quarter of the heavens, without seeing counties* 

 numbers of wild fowl, guided by unerring instinct, directing 

 their timely flight towards the milder climates of the 

 South. 



From Central Africa it is not an unnatural transition to 

 Central Asia, the region next the most inaccessible, and 

 pregnant, perhaps, with greater events. The Russian project 

 for diverting the Oxus, or Amu Darya, from the Sea of 

 Aral into the Caspian, remains under investigation. We 

 learn from the lively account of Mr. George Kennan, a 

 recent American traveller, that there is more than one 

 motive for undertaking this great work, if it shall prove 

 practicable. He states that the lowering of the level of 

 the Caspian Sea, in consequence of the great evaporation 

 from its surface, is occasioning the Russian Government 

 great anxiety ; that the level is steadily but slowly falling, 

 notwithstanding the enormous quantity of water poured in 

 hy the Volga, the Ural, and other rivers. In fact, Colonel 

 Vcnukof says that the Caspian is drying up fast, and that 

 the fresh-water seals, which form so curious a feature of its 

 fauna, are fast diminishing in number. At first view 

 there would not appear great difiiculty in restoring 

 water communication, the point where the river would 

 be diverted being about 216 ft. above the Caspian ; 

 but accurate levelling has shown considerable depressions 

 in the intervening tract. As the question is one of great 

 geographical interest, we may devote a few minutes to it 

 It is not to be doubted that the Oxus, or a branch of it, 

 once flowed into the Caspian Sea. Professor R. Lentz. of 

 the Russian Academie Imperiale des Sciences, sums up his 

 investigation of ancient authorities by aflirming that there 

 is no satisfactory evidence of its ever having done so before 

 the year 1320; passages which have been quoted from 

 Arab writers of the ninth century only prove, in his 

 opinion, that they did not discriminate between the Caspian 

 Sea and the Sea of Aral. There is evidence that in the 

 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the river bifurcated, 

 and one branch found its way to the Caspian, but 

 probably ceased to do so in the sixteenth century. 

 This agrees with Turkoman traditions. Even so 

 late as 1869, the waters of the Oxus reached Lake 

 Sara Kamysh, eighty or ninety miles from their 

 channel, in a great flood, as happened also in 1850, 

 but Sara Kamysh is now some 49 ft. lower than the Cas- 

 pian, and before they could proceed further an immense 

 basin must be filled. The difliculties then of the restoration 

 by artificial means of a communication which natural 

 causes have cut off, are (a) The disappearance of the old 

 bed, which cannot be traced at all over part of the way ; 



(b) The possibility that further natural changes, such as 

 have taken place on the Syr-Daria, may defeat the object : 



(c) The immense expenditure under any circumstances 

 necessary, the distance being about 350 miles, which would 

 be out of all proportion to any immediate commercial 

 benefit to be expected. We may very safely conclude that 

 the thing will not be done, nor is it at all probable that 



