Aug. 10, 1871] 

physical laws, have never been brought under proof by the evi- 
dences of the senses, and are opposed to the dictates of sound 
judgment. It is so far satisfactory in the interests of true bio- 
logical science that no man of note can be named from the long 
list of thoroughly well-informed anatomists and physiologists, 
who has not treated the belief in the separate existence of powers 
of animal magnetism and spiritualism as wild speculations, devoid 
of all foundation in the carefully tested observation of facts. It 
has been the habit of the votaries of the systems to which I have 
referred to assert that scientific men have neglected or declined 
to investigate the phenomena with attention and candour ; but 
nothing can be farther from the truth than this statement. 
Not to mention the admirabie reports of the early French 
academicians, giving the account of the negative result of an 
examination of the earlier mesmeric phenomena by men in every 
way qualified to pronounce judgment on their nature, I am 
aware that from time to time men of eminence, and fully com- 
petent, by their knowledge of biological phenomena, and their 
skill and accuracy in conducting scientific investigation, have 
made the most patient and careful examination of the evidence 
placed before them by the professional believers and practitioners 
of so-called magnetic, phreno-magnetic, electro-biological, and 
spiritualistic phenomena ; and the result has been uniformly the 
same in all cases, when they were permitted to secure conditions 
by which the reality of the phenomena, or the justice of their 
interpretation, could be tested—viz., either that the experiments 
signally failed to educe the results professed, or that the experi- 
menters were detected in the most shameless and determined 
impostures. I have myself been fully convinced of this by 
repeated examinations. But were any guarantee required for 
the care, soundness, and efficiency of the judgment of men of 
science on these phenomena and views, I have only to mention, 
in the first place, the revered name of Faraday, and in the next 
that of my life-long friend Dr. Sharpey, whose ability and can- 
dour none will dispute, and who, Iam happy to think, is here 
among us, ready, from his past experience of such exhibitions, 
to bear his testimony against all classes of /evitation, or the like, 
which may be the last wonder of the day among the mesmeric 
or spiritual pseudo-physiologists. The phenomena to which I 
have at present referred are in great part dependent upon 
natural principles of the human mind, placed, as it would appear, 
in dangerous alliance with certain tendencies of the nervous 
system. They ought not to be worked upon without the greatest 
caution, and they can only be fully understood by the accom- 
plished physiologist who is also conversant with healthy and 
morbid psychology. The experience of the last hundred years 
tends to show that while there are always to be found persons 
peculiarly liable to exhibit the phenomena in question, there will 
also exist a certain number of minds prone to adopt a belief in 
the marvellous and striking in preference to that which is easily 
understood and patent to the senses ; but it may be confidently 
expected that the diffusion of a fuller and more accurate know- 
ledge of vital phenomena among the non-scientific classes of the 
community may lead to a juster appreciation of the phenomena 
in question, and a reduction of the number among them who are 
believers in scientific impossibilities. 
SE Guls OWN a) E 
GEOGRAPHY 
OPENING ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, CoL. H. YuLE, C.B. 
THE first natural duty in circumstances like the present is to 
pay a tribute, however inadequate, to the memory of the eminent 
geographer whom we expected to fill this chair. The long list 
of his works has been rehearsed in so many of the notices 
that have honoured his memory, as well as in the address 
of the Vice-President of the Geographical Society, when pre- 
senting the medal which he had won by so many years of faith- 
ful labour in the cause of Geography, that I need not now repeat 
them. Indeed, when contemplating the catalogue of such an 
amount of work achieved, an amateur geographer like myself 
stands abashed ; but feels at the same time that his own limited 
experience and desultory studies serve at least to furnish him with 
some just scale by which to estimate the vast labours involved in 
the accomplishment of such a life’s work as Dr. Keith Jobnston’s. 
Ishall in this address attempt no general view of the geo- 
graphical desiderata of the time, and of recent geographical pro- 
gress in discovery and literature throughout the world. Living 
habitually far from new books and meetings of sotieties, 1 am 
not sufficient for these things, nor, if I were, could I easily vary 
from the comprehensive epitome of the year’s geography, which 
NATURE 


297 
but two months ago was issued, though, as we know with sorrow, 
not delivered, by him who has been so long the Dean of the 
Faculty of Geographers in Britain, and whose name is identified 
throughout the Continent with English geography. Sir Roderick 
Murchison has desired me to take occasion to express his deep 
regret at his inability to be present at this meeting. It is, he 
said, one of the most painfully-felt disappointments that his ill- 
ness has occasioned. For he had looked forward with strong 
interest to taking part once more in a meeting of the Association 
at the chief city of his native country—with which city, I may 
remind you, he the other day bound his name and memory by 
strong and enduring ties in the foundation of a Chair of Geology 
in this University. Instead, then, of attempting a review which 
in my case would be crude, and therefore both dull and un- 
instructive, I propose to turn to one particular region of the old 
world with which my own studies have sometimes been con- 
cerned, and to say something of its characteristics, and of the pro- 
gress of knowledge, as well as of present questions regarding it. 
There are, however, one or two points on which I must first 
touch lightly. Of Livingstone, all that there is to tell has already 
been told to the world by Sir Roderick Murchison. We know 
the task that Livingstone had Jaid out for himself in dispersing 
the darkness that still hangs over some of the greatest features of 
Central African hydrography, by determining the ultimate course 
of the great body of drainage which he has followed northward 
from 12° south Jatitude—whether towards the Congo and the 
Atlantic, or towards Baker’s Lake and so to the Nile 3 as well 
as the kindred question of the discharge of Lake Tanganyika ; 
but of his progress in the solution of those questions we know 
nothing. I can but add that Sir Roderick himself has lost none 
of his confidence in the accomplishment of the task, and in the 
return of the great traveller at no distant period. That confidence 
of his has been so often before justified by the arrival of fresh 
news of Livingstone, however meagre, that we may well retain 
stroig hope, even if it be not granted to all of us to rise from 
hope into confidence. We trust, then, that Livingstone will 
never haye a place among the martyrs of geography. 
One addition, however, has been made during the past year to 
that long list, in the name of the undaunted George Hayward, 
formerly a lieutenant in the 72nd Regiment, who had for some 
years resolutely devoted himself to geozraphical discovery. After 
having proved his powers ina journey to Yarkand and Kashghar, 
which obtained for him last year one of the medals of the 
Geographical Society, he had started again, with aid from that 
Society, to attempt an examination of the famous plateau of 
Pamir, hoping to succeed in crossing it, and to descend upon the 
Russian territory at Samarkand. In the Darkot Pass above Yas- 
sin, he was foully murdered by the emissaries of the chief of that 
district, Mir Wali by name. Public suspicion in India first turned 
upon the Maharajah of Kashmir, on whose alleged oppressions 
Hayward, in a private letter, had made severe remarks, which 
were rashly published by the editor of a local newspaper. The 
latest intelligence seems to exonerate the Maharajah, and to throw 
the guilt of complicity rather on the Mahomedan Chief of Chitral. 
If he be the guilty man, it may be difficult to punish him, so in- 
accessible is his position at present ; for, to apply the old saw of 
the Campbells, ‘‘It is a far cry to Chitral.” “I may observe, 
however, that some sixteen or seventeen years ago, a similar 
murder took place on the persons of two poor French priests at 
the other extremity of India, and within t:e Thibetan boundary 
on the Upper Brahmapootra, and the apprehension of the crimi- 
nal must have seemed almost ‘as hopeless as in this case. Yet 
eventually he feil into the hands of our officers of the province of 
Assam, and paid the due penalty of his crime. 
The geographical field on which, with your permission, I pro- 
pose to expatiate for a little, is that of India beyond the Ganges. 
I mean in the largest sense of the expression, and inclusive, at 
least, in some points of view, of the Indian Islands. India, in- 
deed, in old times was a somewhat vague term, or at least it had 
always a vague as wellas an exacter interpretation. In the latter, 
it had the same application that we give it now when we speak 
with precision ; it meant that vast semi-peninsular region roughly 
limited by the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges, which embraces 
many nations and many tongues and many climates, but yet all 
pervaded by a certain almost intangible character, which gives it 
a kind of unity recognised by all. In its vaguer sense, India 
meant simply the Far East. The traces of such use still survive 
in such expressions as the East Indies or the Indian Archipelago. 
Though this vague and large application of the name probably 
arose only from the vagueness of knowledge, it coincides roughly 
with a fact, and that is the extraordinary expansion of Hindoo 
