Feb. 12, 1885] 



X A JUKE 



547 



very network of babbling brooks and streams — those of 

 Lykipia forming the mysterious Guaso N>iro; those of 

 Kikuyu the Tana, which flows to the Indian Ocean 

 through the Galla country ; while further, south, in Kapte 

 the streams converge to form the Athi River, which flows 

 through U-kambani to the Sabaki River." 



Here is Mr. Thomson's account of his observations on 

 Mount Kenia: — ''We were now at an altitude of 5700 

 feet, which may be taken as the general level of the plain 

 from which Mount Kenia rises. Kenia itself is clearly 

 d! olcanic origin, and may be considered to be a counter- 

 pan of the Kimawenzi peak of Kilimanjaro. Unlike 

 Kilimanjaro, its volcanic forces have not changed their 

 focus of activity, and hence it now stands as a simple 

 undivided cone. Up to a height of 15,000 feet (9000 feet 

 above the plain) the angle of slope is extremely low, being 

 in fact only between 10' and 12 , a fact which would seem 

 to show that the lavas ejected must have been in a much 

 more liquid condition than those of Kilimanjaro. The 

 angle in the latter is much higher, indicating that the 

 ejections were more viscid, and consequently did not flow 

 so far from the orifice. At an elevation of over 1 5,000 feet 

 the mountain suddenly springs at a high angle into a 

 a sugar-loaf peak, which adds a further height of about 

 3400 feet. At the base of the peak two small excrescences 

 are noticeable, and some distance to the north there rises 

 a humpy mass. This peak, as in the case of Kimawenzi, 

 without a doubt represents the column of lava which 

 closed the volcanic life of the mountain, plugging or seal- 

 ing up the troubled spirits of the earth. The crater has 

 been gradually washed away — having been composed, 

 doubtless, of loose ashes and beds of lava, and now the 

 plug stands forth, a fitting pinnacle to the majestic mass 

 below. As at Kilimanjaro, nature has appropriately 

 woven for its grim head a soft crown of eternal snow, the 

 cool, calm shining of which is at once a wonderful con- 

 and a strange close to the mountain's fiery history. 

 The sides of this upper peak are so steep and precipitous 

 that on many places the snow is quite unable to lie, and 

 in consequence the rocks appear here and there as black 

 spots in the white mantle. Hence its Masai name of 

 Donyo Egere (the speckled or gray mountain). The 

 snow covers the whole of the upper peak, and extends 

 some distance on either side, reaching, and indeed in- 

 cluding, the humpy mass on the north. The peak is 

 strikingly suggestive of an enormous white crystal or 

 stalagmite, set upon a sooty basement, which falls away 

 gradually into the dark emerald green of the forest region 

 round the base." 



On the north side of Mount Kenia very few streams 

 have their origin, though on the south side they are said 

 to be abundant. It is still more unaccountable that, 

 except on the south side of Mount Kilimanjaro, not a 

 stream trickles down the snow-capped mountain, a phe- 

 nomenon which only actual exploration can account 

 for. One of our illustrations (Fig. 2) shows a great lava-cap 

 in the Eigeyo Mountains to the west of Lake Baringo. 

 In a running survey such as Mr. Thomson made, 

 minute obsenation is of course impossible ; but with 

 his experience as a field geologist and his general caution, 

 we may accept his geological map of the region lying 

 between Victoria Xyanza and the coast as in a general 

 representative of the facts. Along the coast at 

 Mombassa we find a strip of Tertiary rocks, succeeded 

 westwards by a broad band of Carboniferous. West and 

 north west of this is a great area of metamorphic rocks, 

 having their counterpart further westwards on th< 



■ Xyanza. Between them, in three 

 irregular strips, lie the earlier and later volcanic 

 the mass of Kilimanjaro winding its way into the meta- 

 morphic, and Kenia lying on the northern edge of the 



latter. Thatvolcan 1 ictii it} I quite 1 inct is shown 



by the fact that in the Kenia region hot springs and pools 

 are met with, and the natives I 



site of Lake Chala, on the east side of Kilimanjaro, once 

 stood a large and populous town. 



Thus Mr. Thomson has been able to fill up in a very 

 satisfactory manner a considerable blank on the map of 

 Africa. He has moreover established the fact that 

 Baringo is a distinct lake, and that the east shore of 

 Victoria Nyanza trends much more to the north-west 

 than we find it on Mr. Stanley's map. The combined 

 observations of Mr. Thomson and Mr. Johnston are a 

 valuable addition to a scientific knowledge of one of the 

 most interesting regions of Africa. 



NOTES 



Many of our readers will be pleaded to learn that M. Charles 

 Feil has, after some years' absence, returned to the active 

 management of his celebrated manufactory of optical glass in 

 Paris, the new firm being " Feil pere et Mautois." M. Charles 

 Feil, who is well known both for his scientific and business 

 abilities, is grandson to M. Guinaud, who, some sixty years 

 since, in a mode of working almost identical with that adopted 

 by the celebrated potter Palissy, overcame the serious obstacles 

 which occur in securing the perfect homogeneity of both crown 

 and flint glass, and whose secrets have descended to his 

 grandson. 



It is with great regret we announce the death, on the 7th 

 inst., of Mr. Edward Caldwell Rye, Librarian to the Royal 

 Geographical Society, after a very short illness, from small-pox, 

 aged about fifty-two years. In natural history he specially 

 made his mark as an entomologist, and for a long time was the 

 chief authority on British beetles, on which subject he was the 

 author of a volume in Lovell Reeve and Co.'s series of popular 

 works on British Natural History. Fur several years he contri- 

 buted the article " Coleoptera " to the Entomologist? A nnwil, 

 and he was one of the editors of the Entomologists' Monthly Maga- 

 zine from its commencement in 1864. Furthermore he was for 

 some years on the staff of the Zoological Record as a contributor, 

 and since the loth volume of that useful publication he had been 

 sole editor. Nowhere will his nearly sudden death be more felt 

 than at the Royal Geographical Society, for, in addition to his 

 ordinary duties as Librarian, diat of editing the bibliographical 

 portion of the Proceedings devolved upon him. .Mr. Rye married 

 a daughter of .Mr. G. R. Waterhouse, of the British Museum, 

 who, with four children, all young, survives him ; and, it report 

 be true, they are left almost unprovided for. He was a Fellow 

 of the Zoological Society, a member of the Entomological 

 Society of London, and the Recording Secretary of Section E 

 at the meetings of the British Association. 



We regret to announce the death, at Paris, on February 1, 

 at the early age of thirty-four, of Mr. Sidney Gilchrisl '1 nomas, 

 to whom is mainly due the basic Bessemer process. Born in 

 1S50, he entered the Civil Service, but from his youth showed 

 a taste for science, and especially metallurgy. The project of 

 eliminating phosphorus by the Bessemer converter soon 01 ttpie 1 

 all his attention, and, after numerous experiments at Blaenavon, 

 in is;; he took out lus first patent, and communicated his 

 invention to the Iron and Steel Institute in a paper read at the 

 Paris meeting in 1878. 



Tin. Minister of Agriculture in Canada ha, just declared the 

 Bell tele: hone patent void in the Dominion, the occasion being a 

 double infraction of the Canadian law by the Canadian Tele- 

 phone Company. It appear, that the Company imported tele- 

 phones after the expiry of two years from the date of the patent, 

 and that it also refused to sell instruments to the public, demand- 

 ing annual rentals for the lease, as in ihi, country and in the 

 Both the e acts contravene the Dominion ! 



