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_ Livingstone on July ist, in which, in answer to his son’s letters 
from Zanzibar, he deplores the break-up of the expedition, 
showing how valuable would have been to him the arrival 
of the officers at Unyanyembe, and he proposed subse- 
quently to have utilised their services. At the same time, 
it is only fair to Lieutenant Dawson to say that no imputa- 
tion whatever rests upon his courage or his honour. 
~ Let it be understcod, once for all, that there is not the remotest 
ground for questioning the accuracy of Mr, Stanley’s statement. 
It is positively certain that Stanley and Livingstone met at Ujiji 
this time last year, that they travelled on an exploring journey 
round the northern end of Lake Tanganyika, and subsequently 
came down together to Unyamyembe, where the Doctor still was 
at the date of his last despatches.” Referring to the sufferings 
‘undergone by Livingstone, the President,said, ‘*it is not therefore 
surprising that, while smarting under his losses and injuries, he 
should have reflected with some bitterness on Dr. Kirk, the 
Acting-Consul at Zanzibar, who was more or less concerned in send- 
ing off the supplies, and in selecting the agents to be employed.” 
After alluding to the complete reconciliation which it is hoped 
has now been effected between Livingstone and Kirk, the 
president at some length entered into Livingstone’s geographical 
researches, and arrived at these conclusions:—‘‘ There can 
be no reasonable doubt that this great water-system of Centrai 
Africa belongs to the Congo and not to the Nile. The proofs of 
the identity of the Lualaba and the Congo, derived from a com- 
parison of height-measurements, of volume of water, of the 
periodical rains and rise of the rivers, &c. have been put to- 
gether very clearly in a paper by Dr. Behm, which has just ap- 
peared in the current number of Petermann’s 4Mittheilungen,’ 
and many arguments arising from local information, as well as 
from coincidences of natural history and ethnology, might be 
added in corroboration. The only impediment, indeed, to a full 
and clear understanding on this point is the remarkable fact that, 
although Livingstone had followed down the gradual slope of the 
Lualaba from the high plateau where it rises, 5,000 or 6,000 feet 
above the sea-level, to a point where the barometer gave an eleva 
tion of only 2,000 feet—that is to a point depressed 1,000 feet 
below the parallel Nile basin to the eastward ; and although the 
constant trending of the waters to the west haunted him with 
misgivings, still he clung tenaciously to his old belief that he 
must be on the track of the Nile, and even speculated on the 
possibility of the great river he was pursuing debouching by 
the Bahr-el-Ghazal. It must be borne in mind, however, that 
Livingstone in his African solitude had no knowledge of 
Schweinfurth’s discoveries. He had no idea that one, or per- 
haps two, watersheds intervened between the Lualaba and the 
head-waters of the Bahr-el-Ghazal ; nor does he seem to have 
been aware that his great river at Nyangwé contained 19 times 
the volume of water contributed by the western affluent of the 
White Nile. When this revelation breaks on him, it is not too 
much to suppose that he will abandon his Nile theory, and 
rest satisfied with the secondary honour—if indeed it be 
secondary—of having discovered and traced the upper course of 
the Congo, which is emphatically called by the natives ‘the 
great river’ of Africa,” The president then spoke of the 
“Livingstone Congo Expedition,” to which we refer in 
another column, ‘*The deputation of Sir Bartle Frere on a 
mission to Zanzibar for the suppression of the slave trade, of 
which Livingstone may hear before he leaves the vicinity of 
Lake Tanganyika, will be to him an event of the intensest inte- 
yest, and may thus have an important influence on his future 
movements, Itis not impossible that Lieut. Cameron might 
fall in with Baker’s flotilla on the Albert Nyanza, as reports have 
reached us, though not as yet officially confirmed, that Sir S. 
Baker had pushed on during last summer with a flying column 
from Gondokoro to the point where the Nile leaves the Nyanza, 
and had made arrangements for his steamer and boats to be 
brought up in carts.” 
Linnean Society, Nov. 7.—Mr. G. Bentham, president, in 
the chair. On the buds developed on leaves of AZalaxis, by 
Dr. Dickie. These buds, developed chiefly on the margins of 
the leaves of Malaxis paludosa, are of interest from the very 
remarkable resemblance which they bear to the ovules of Orchids, 
representing an embryo enclosed in a loose enveloping testa.— 
On the * Piopio” of New Zealand (A¢rofia crassirostris Gmel), 
by T. H. Potts. 
Chemical Society, Noy. 7—Prof, Williamson, F.R.S., inthe 
chair. Papers were read by Mr. C, E, Stanford, on “the action of 
charcoal on organic nitrogen,” being an account of his experiments 
NATURE | | $8 
‘i Dalia tai a 
to ascertain the value of a method of deodorising and utilising fish- 
offal and other offensive matters by mixing them with charcoal ; and 
“on Iona pebbles.”—A communication entitled “ Mineralogical 
Notices,” by Prof. Storey Maskelyne and Dr. Flight, was then 
read by the former, giving a short description of several minerals 
mostly new or from fresh localities —Mr.J.R. A. Newlands gave a 
brief explanation of ‘‘a means of preventing explosions in coal- 
mines,” which the author proposes to effect by erecting air-tight 
chambers over the upcast and downcast shafts, and forcing air 
through the workings by powerful air pumps or ventilating fans. 
—There were also papers ‘‘on the specific heat of occluded 
hydrogen,” by W. C. Roberts, and Dr. C. R. A, Wright, and 
‘fon some probable reactions that yielded negative results” by 
Dr. C, R. A. Wright. A specimen of bromocamphor was 
exhibited by Mr. Williams, of the firm of Hopkin and Williams, 
who stated that it was used medicinally as a nerve sedative, in 
such diseases as delirium tremens. 
Entomological Society, Nov. 4.—Prof. Westwood, presi- 
dent, in the chair. Mr. S. Stevens exhibited an example of Pieris 
Daplidice, and six of Argynnis Lathonia, captured by himself in 
the autumn, at Dover ; also, from the same locality, varieties of 
Pyrameis cardui, and Callimorpha dominula ; Sesia asiliformis, 
Charocampa celerio, and Deilephila livornica from Brighton ; and 
a dark variety of Pieris rape from Ireland, Mr. F. Smith ex- 
hibited a large collection of Formicide sent from Calcutta 
by Mr. Rothney. He also exhibited, and presented to the So- 
ciety, the minute-book of the old Entomological Society, con- 
taining records of the meetings between 1806 and 1822 ; incor- 
porating also the minutes of the pre-existing Aurelian Society— 
this had been given to him by Dr, J. E. Gray, Mr. Butler 
exhibited the impression of the wing of a butterfly in Stonesfield 
slate ; it was remarkably perfect, and approached nearest to the 
existing South American genus Ca/igo. Mr. Davis exhibited a 
large collection of beautifully preserved larvze of various insects. 
Mr, Davis exhibited a collection of drawings illustrating the 
traysformations! of Indian Lepidoptera. He also remarked con- 
cerning the habits of the common gnat ; from July to the present 
time he had, every day, found swarms of this insect in his house, 
ail being females, which sex only is capable of inflicting painful 
bites ; the windows were constantly closed, yet each day a fresh 
swarm appeared to replace those destroyed, and he could not 
account for their appearance, unless they (as he thought probable) 
came down the chimneys. Mr, Miiller read notes on the habits 
of a small beetle allied to Anobium, which he had bred from a 
large oak-gall from California. The Rev. R. P. Murray com- 
municated notes on variations in the neuration of certain Pafilio- 
nide. A further portion of the proposed general Catalogue of 
British Insects, comprising the /chneum onide, Braconide, &c. 
compiled by the Rey. T. A. Marshall, was announced as pub- 
lished, and notes thereon by Mr. Marshall were read. 
Anthropological Institute, Nov. 5.—Dr. R. S. Charnock, 
vice-president, in the chair, A paper was read on ‘‘ Man and 
the Ape” by Mr. C. Staniland Wake. After referring to the 
agreement in physical structure of man and the ape, and to the 
fact that the latter possesses the power of reasoning, with all the 
faculties necessary for its due exercise, the author proceeded to 
show that it is incorrect to affirm that man has no special mental 
faculty. He has a spiritual insight or power of reflection which 
enables him to distinguish qualities and to separate them as 
objects of thought from the things to which they belong. Ail 
language is in some sense the result of such a process, and its 
exercise by even the most uncivilised peoples is shown in their 
having words denoting colours. The possession by man of the 
faculty of insight or reflection is accompanied by a relative phy- 
sical superiority. The human brain is much longer than that of 
the ape, and he has also a much more refined nervous structure, 
with a naked skin. The author here showed that the only phy- 
sical fact absolutely necessary to be accounted for is the great 
size of the human brain, and this could not be done on the hypo- 
thesis of natural selection. Mr, Wallace’s reference, on the other 
hand, to a creative will really undermines Mr. Darwin’s whole 
hypothesis. After referring to the theories of Mr, Murphy and 
Haeckel, the author stated that the only way to explain man’s 
origin, consistently with his physical and mental connection with 
the ape, is to suppose that nature is an organic whole, and that 
man is the necessary result of its evolution. While man, there- 
fore, is derived from the ape, as supposed by Mr, Darwin, it is 
under conditions very different from those which his hypothesis 
requires. According to this, the appearance of man on the 
earth must have been in a certain sense accidental ; while, ec- 
