DECEMBER 3, 1903] 
NATURE 
107 
The chapter on animal parasites is of interest, and 
will be eagerly perused by those for whom this book 
is written; so will the illustrations and descriptions of 
insect weapons and tools, although this chapter might 
with great ease have been made more popular by | 
many added illustrations from familiar sources. 
The book is well printed on good paper and admir- 
ably bound. It would make a useful and desirable 
present, and will, we believe, be read with pleasure 
by the general public, who will find that it opens a 
new world of facts and suggestions to them. 1D), 
Ue TSVBIKOFE’S JOURNEY FO LHASSA. 
N the latest number of the Izvestia of the Russian 
Geographical Society (1903, iii.) there is a very 
interesting paper, by M. G. Ts. Tsybilsoff, on his 
journey to Central Tibet and his stay at the city of 
the Dalai-lama, Lhassa, the unattained goal of so 
many European travellers. M. Tsybikoff is a Russian 
Buryate by birth, and a Lamaite by religion, who 
studied at the Oriental faculty of a 
Russian university, and after havy- 
three above-named monasteries and the numbers of 
pilgrims. 
During his stay at Lhassa M. Tsybikoff made an 
extremely valuable collection of 317 volumes (now in 
the hands of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences) 
| o° Tibetan books on philosophy, medicine, astronomy, 
history and geography, as also of prayers and incant- 
ations, written by the most renowned lamas for the 
last nine centuries. 
The paper is illustrated by nine excellent photo- 
| graphs, representing views of Lhassa, the palace of 
| the Dalai-lama, and the monasteries of Galdan and 
| Dashi-lhunbo. The pictures are taken from the 
| collection of M. Norzunoff, a Kalmyk pilgrim who 
also was at Lhassa in the same year, and brought 
back forty-five photographs. M. Tsybiloff’s collec- 
tion (twenty-one photos) reached the Russian Geo- 
graphical Society after the views mentioned above had 
been printed. 
Those who are interested in Tibet will be glad to 
know that, besides the diary of the Buryate Zayaeff, 
| 
ing carefully prepared himself for 
this journey went to Tibet, as so 
many Buryate pilgrims do. He 
stayed on his way through Mon- 
golia in two of the most renowned 
Mongolian monasteries, and on 
August 1, 1900, entered the holy 
precincts of Central Tibet without 
any difficulty. It was on_ the 
northern slope of the Bumza Pass, 
on the San-chu River. From this 
spot the caravan travelled south- 
westwards through the broad and 
open, extremely high and dry 
valleys of Central Tibet, where 
cereals are nevertheless grown by 
means of irrigation, and on August 
16 they entered the holy city, after 
a three months’ journey from the 
Gumbum Monastery, and a 370 
miles’ journey through Tibet 
proper. 
At Lhassa M. Tsybikoff stayed 
more than twelve months, until 
September 23, 1901, and from that 
city he made an excursion so far as 
Tsetan, or Chetan, visiting, besides 
the three great monasteries situated 
round Lhassa—Braibun (8500 monks), Sera (5000 
monks) and Galdan (2000 to 2500 monks)—also the 
monasteries of Dashi-lhunbo (170 miles from Lhassa, 
on the right bank of the Brahmaputra) and Sam-yai, 
on the left bank of the same river, about 67 miles 
south-east of Lhassa, one of the oldest in Tibet, as 
it was founded in the ninth century. He also visited 
the towns Shiha-tse, Chan-tse, and Tsetan. 
The descriptions which the Russian traveller gives 
of Lhassa and its sanctuaries, as well as of the monas- 
teries already mentioned, the population, its compo- 
sition and its ways of living, the Government and 
administration, and the climate of the country— 
meteorological. observations were made thrice a day 
without interruption for 235 days—are extremely 
interesting. The estimates of population hitherto 
given have been very much exaggerated, and M. 
Tsybikoff takes the number as not exceeding two and | 
a half millions, out of whom one million are living | 
in the two provinces U and Tsan.  Lhassa has no 
more than 10,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of whom are 
women, its population having been overestimated on 
acce— of the 15,000 to 16,000 monks staying in the 
NO. 1779, VOL. 69] 
Fic. 1.—Rodala, the palace of the Dalai-lama, at Lhassa, seen from the scuth. ([t is built on 
the cliff Mar-bo-ri, which 1ises above the plain of the Ui-chu Kiver, about two-thirds of 
a mile from the city itsel!). 
| who visited Central Tibet in the eighteenth century, 
the diary of the Kalmyk Baza-bakshi Menkejieff was 
published in 1897, with a Russian translation by Prof. 
Pezdnéeff. 
| 
| ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE ROYAL 
SOCIETY. 
T the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society on 
Monday, the officers and council for the year 
were elected, the report of the council was read, and 
the president delivered his address. In the following 
list of the elected council, the names of new members 
are printed in italics :— 
President, Sir William 
Mr. A. B. Kempe; Secretaries : 
Sir Archibald Geikie; Foreign Secretary, Mr. Francis 
Darwin. Other Members of the Council: Mr. G. A. 
Boulenger, Prof. J. R. Bradford, Prof. H. L. Callendar, 
Mr. F. W. Dyson, Prof. H. B. Dixon, Sir Michael Foster, 
K.C.B., Prof. P. F. Frankland, Sir Robert Giffen, K.C:B., 
Prof. W. D. Halliburton, Dr. E.-W. Hobson, Prof. J. W. 
Huggins, K.C.B.; Treasurer, 
Prof. Joseph Larmor and 
