September 



890] 



NATURE 



485 



paratively little known to that class of the community with which 

 I have so much sympathy, the ordinary British tourist. These 

 flock every year in hundreds to Algeria and Tunis, but few of 

 them visit the splendid Roman remains in the interior of those 

 countries. The Cyrenaica is not so easily accessible, and I 

 doubt whether any Englishmen have travelled in it since the 

 exploration of Smith and Porcher in 1861. 



Cyrene almost rivalled Carthage in commercial importance. 

 The Hellenic ruins still existing bear witness to the splendour of 

 its five great cities. It was the birthplace of many distinguished 

 people, and amongst its hills and fountains were located some of 

 the most interesting scenes in mythology, such as the Gardens of 

 the Ilesperides, and the "silent, dull, forgetful waters of 

 Lethe." 



This peninsula is only separated by a narrow strait from 

 Greece, whence it was originally colonized. There, and indeed 

 all over the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, are many little- 

 trodden routes ; but the subject is too extensive ; I am reluc- 

 tantly compelled to restrict my remarks to the western half. 



The south of Italy is more frequently traversed and less 

 travelled in than any part of that country. Of the thousands 

 who yearly embark or disembark at Brindisi, few ever visit the 

 Land of Manfred. Otranto is only known to them from the 

 fanciful descriptions in Horace Walpole's romance. The general 

 public in this country is quite ignorant of what is going on at 

 Taranto, and of the great arsenal and dockyard which Italy is 

 constructing in the Mare Piccolo, an inland sea containing more 

 than 1000 acres of anchorage for the largest ironclads afloat, 

 yet with an entrance so narrow that it is spanned by a revolving 

 bridge. Even the Adriatic, though traversed daily by steamers 

 of the Austrian Lloyd's Company, is not a highway of travel ; 

 yet where is it possible to find so many places of interest within 

 the short space of a week's voyage, between Corfu and Trieste, 

 as along the Dalmatian and Istrian shores, and among the islands 

 that fringe the former, where it is difficult to realize that one is 

 at sea at all, and not on some great inland lake ? 



There is the Bocche di Cattaro, a vast rent made by the 

 Adriatic among the mountains, where the sea flows round their 

 spurs in a series of canals, bays, and lakes of surpassing beauty. 

 The city of Cattaro itself, the gateway of Montenegro, with its 

 picturesque Venetian fortress, nestling at the foot of the black 

 mountain, Ragusa, the Roman successor of the Hellenic Epi- 

 daurus, Queen of the Southern Adriatic, battling with the waves 

 on her rock-bound peninsula, the one spot in all that sea which 

 never submitted either to Venice or the Turk, and for centuries 

 resisting the barbarians on every side, absolutely unique as a 

 mediaeval fortified town, and worthy to have given her name to 

 the argosies she sent forth ; Spalato, the grandest of Roman 

 monuments ; Lissa, colonized by Dionysius of Syracuse, and 

 memorable to us as having been a British naval station from 

 1812 to 1814, while the French held Dalmatia ; Zara, the 

 capital, famous for its siege by the Crusaders, interesting from an 

 ecclesiological point of view, and venerated as the last resting- 

 place of St. Simeon, the prophet of the Nunc dimittis ; 

 Parenza, with its great basilica ; Pola, with its noble harbour, 

 whence Belisarius sailed forth, now the chief naval port of the 

 Austrian Empire, with its Roman amphitheatre and graceful 

 triumphal arches ; besides many other places of almost equal 

 interest. Still further west are Corsica, Sardinia, and the 

 Balearic Islands, all easily accessible from the coasts of France, 

 Italy, and Spain. Their ports are constantly visited by mail- 

 steamers and private yachts, yet they are but little explored in 

 the interior. 



A physical and historical description of Corsica was then given. 

 The address concluded as follows : — 



I have endeavoured to sketch, necessarily in a very imperfect 

 manner, the physical character and history of the Mediterranean, 

 to show how the commerce of the world originated in a small 

 maritime State at its eastern extremity ; how it gradually ad- 

 vanced westward till it burst through the Straits of Gibraltar, 

 and extended over seas and continents until then undreamt of, 

 an event which deprived the Mediterranean of that commercial 

 prosperity and greatness which for centuries had been limited to 

 its narrow basin. 



Once more this historic sea has become the highway of 

 nations ; the persistent energy and genius of two men have 

 revolutionized navigation, opened out new and boundless fields 

 for commerce ; and it is hardly too much to say that if the 

 Mediterranean is to be restored to its old position of importance ; 

 if the struggle for Africa is to result in its regeneration, as hap- 



NO. 1089, VOL. 42] 



pened in the New World ; if the dark places still remaining ir> 

 the further East are to be civilized, it will be in a great measure 

 due to Waghorn and Ferdinand de Lesseps, who developed the 

 overland route and created the Suez Canal. 



But the Mediterranean can only hope to retain its regenerated 

 position in time of peace. Nothing is more certainly shown by 

 past history than that war and conquest have changed the route 

 of commerce in spite of favoured geographical positions. 

 Babylon was conquered by Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, 

 and Romans, and though for a time her position on the Euphrates 

 caused her to rise like a Phoenix from her ashes, successive con- 

 quests, combined with the luxury and effeminacy of her rulers, 

 caused her to perish. Tyre, conquered by Nebuchadnezzar and 

 Alexander, fell as completely as Babylon had •done, and her 

 trade passed to Alexandria. Ruined sites of commercial cities . 

 rarely again become emporia of commerce ; Alexandria is art 

 exception dependent on very exceptional circumstances. 



The old route to the East was principally used by sailing- 

 vessels, and was abandoned for the shorter and more economical 

 one by the Suez Canal, which now enables a round voyage to 

 be made in sixty days, which formerly required from six ta 

 eight months. This, however, can only remain open in time of 

 peace. It is quite possible that in the event of war the old 

 route by the Cape may be again used, to the detriment of traffic 

 by the Mediterranean. Modern invention has greatly economized 

 the use of coal ; and steamers, by the use of duplex and triplex 

 engines, can run with a comparatively small consumption of 

 fuel, thus leaving a larger space for cargo. England, the great 

 carrying Power of the world, rnay find it more advantageous to 

 trust to her own strength and the security of the open seas than 

 to run the gauntlet of the numerous strategical positions in the 

 Mediterranean, such as Port Mahon, Bizerta, and Taranto, each 

 of which is capable of affording impregnable shelter to a hostile 

 fleet, and though the ultimate key to the Indian Ocean is in our 

 own hands, our passage to it may be beset with a thousand 

 dangers. There is no act of my career on which I look back 

 with so much satisfaction as on the share I had in the occupation 

 of Perim, one of the most important links in that chain of coal- 

 ing stations which extends through the Mediterranean to the 

 further East, and which is so necessary for the maintenance of 

 our naval supremacy. It is a mere islet, it is true, a barren 

 rock, but one surrounding a noble harbour, and so eminently in 

 its right place that we cannot contemplate with equanimity the 

 possibility of its being in any other hands than our own. 



It is by no means certain whether exaggerated armaments are 

 best suited for preserving peace or hastening a destructive war ; 

 the golden age of disarmament and international arbitration may 

 not be near at hand, but it is even now talked of as a possibility. 



Should the poet's prophecy or the patriot's dream be realized, 

 and a universal peace indeed bless the world, then this sea of 

 so many victories may long remain the harvest field of a 

 commerce nobler than conquest. 



NOTES. 



The Kew Herbarium has just been enriched by a set of the 

 dried plants from the extensive collections made by Regel, 

 Przewalski, Potanin, and other recent Russian travellers in 

 Central and Eastern Asia. This valuable set numbers about 

 2600 species, including very many novelties, and it was pre- 

 sented to the Royal Gardens, Kew, through the good offices of 

 Dr. A. E. von Regel, Director of the Imperial Botanic Garden 

 at St. Petersburg, and Mr. C. J. Maximowicz, the Curator of 

 the Herbarium in the same establishment. 



A LABORATORY for plant-biology has been recently opened at 

 Fontainebleaa. It is under the direction of M. Bonnier, Pro- 

 fessor of Botany at the Sorbonne in Paris, to whom application 

 should be made by any contemplating research there. 



Dr. William Waagen, F.G.S., formerly Palaeontologist to 

 the Geological Survey of India, and of late years Professor of 

 Geology at Prague, has been appointed Professor of Palaeontology 

 to the University of Vienna, in succession to the late Dr. 

 Neumayr. 



In a " Supplement to the Catalogue of Diurnal Accipitres in 

 the Australian Museum at Sydney, N.S. W.," Dr. E. P. Ramsay 



