44 



NA TURE 



\Nov. 12, 1885 



on agriculture and gardening. All the religions of the region are 

 met with among them. Around He-cheu they are all Mussul- 

 mans ; but families having several male children send one 

 of them to a Laniaite monastery so as not to divide their land- 

 holdings too greatly, and so a class of Buddhist Lamas has arisen. 

 Those who have received Chinese instruction follow the teach- 

 ings of Confucius, while the remainder go indifferently to Bud- 

 dhist or Chinese temples, and many have Shamanist divinities. 

 As to IVI. Berezovsky, he has left the expedition and has taken 

 another route, viCi Hoy-syan ; he proposes to rejoin MM. 

 Potanin and Skassi on their way to the south. 



The expedition which is reported to have been massacred in 

 New Guinea was sent out by the Geographical Society of Aus- 

 tralasia, founded in May lS8^. The commander, Capt. Heniy 

 Charles Everill, had been selected from a number of candidates, 

 and his staff included a naturalist, a surgeon, two sub-leaders, 

 one on land and the other on sea, a photographer, three natural 

 history collectors, a surveyor, an engineer, and a "general 

 utility " volunteer. Very full instructions were drawn out for 

 the expedition, while considerable discretion was left to the 

 leader to adapt his operations to circumstances. The instruc- 

 tions included directions not only for surveying work, but for 

 observations on the natives, on zoology, botany, and geology, 

 with directions for the collection and preservation of specimens. 

 The expedition was to enter the Aird River, which is probably 

 only an east arm of the Fly River. As a matter of fact, a tele- 

 gram of September 22 announced the arrival of the Bonito (the 

 vessel in which the expedition sailed from Sydney) in the Fly 

 River. It was to penetrate as far as possible into the interior. 

 The Australasian Society contributed 500^ to the expedition of 

 Mr. H. O. Forbes, who, according to latest news, was at Port 

 Moresby preparing to penetrate into the interior. Happily the 

 report of the massacre is discredited by the British resident on 

 Thursday Island. 



The Geographical Society of Lisbon passed a resolution at its 

 last meeting asking the Portuguese Government to make a 

 money grant by way of remuneration to the explorers MM. 

 Capello and Ivens, and to pay the cost of publishing not less 

 than 5000 copies of the account of their journey. It was also 

 resolved to address every commercial association throughout the 

 country pointing out the necessity of establishing a company or 

 society for the purpose of investigating colonial markets hitherto 

 imperfectly known, but of which M.M. Capello and Ivens are 

 showing the importance. 



At the last meeting of the Paris Society of Commercial Geo 

 graphy on the 20th ult. , the Burmese Envoy being present, M. 

 Bran de Saint Pol Li.as described his recent journeys in Indo- 

 China, which appear not to have extended far beyond Saigon, 

 Cambodia, and the delta of the Red River. Indeed, travel even 

 in these c jmparatively frequented parts of the peninsula must 

 have bc'-n difficult when the traveller was there, for the greater 

 part of Tonquin and Cambodia was in rebellion at the time of 

 his visit. 



The BitlU'iin (2= trimestre, 1SS5) of the Paris Geographical 

 Society, just published, contains a long report on the labours of 

 the society, and on the progress of the geographical sciences, by 

 M. Maunoir, the secretary. The work is, as usual, well and 

 thoroughly done. The only other p.aper in the number is a 

 description of the regions of Algeria traversed by the meridian 

 of Paris, by Commander Derrien. This is accompanied by a 

 map, and describes in succession, and with great detail, their 

 orography, hydrography, geology, military roads, meteorology, 

 military and administrative divisions, and also discusses the 

 origin of the tribes of the Jebel Amour. 



The Geographical Society of Tokio appears to be steadily 

 pursuing its work. The recent numbers of its Journal, which 

 we have before us, show much activity in regions around Japan. 

 Amongst the papers in the sixth volume we notice the follow- 

 ing :— The five races of the Chinese Empire, and their ancient 

 progress, by Mr. Otori ; the interior of Northern Corea, by Mr. 

 Kaizu ; travels in Siam ; notes on Thibet (compiled from Euro- 

 pean sources) ; Formosa under the Chinese ; Manchuria : recent 

 events in Annum ; travels in South-eastern Russia ; the salt-tax 

 in China ; colonisation in Saghalien (a review) ; Formosa during 

 the Dutch occupation ; historical notes on the relations between 

 Russia and China ; notes on the aboriginal language of For- 

 mosa, with a considerable vocabulary ; Candaharand the Lower 

 Cabul Valley, with a sketch map ; the mines of Central Japan, 



with a map, and various other minor communications. The 

 first number of the tenth volume contains a paper by Mr. 

 Akamatsu on the origin and condition of the Chinese emigrants 

 to the Philippines, based apparently on the writings of Prof. 

 Blumentritt on the subject ; and one on the longitude of 

 Japan, l>y Mr. Arai, the head of the meteorological bureau. 

 The yoit7->ial is printed in Japanese, but a short table of 

 contents is appended in English. 



The leading paper in the current namijer t^Helt 3, Band viii.) of 

 the Deutsche Geograpliiscltc Blatter, the 1 rgan of the Geographical 

 .Society of Bremen, is one by Leonard Steineger, describing a 

 voyage around Behring Island, off the coast of Kamchatka, in 

 the autumn of 1882. It describes at some length the incidents 

 of the voyage, the capabilities of the island, &c. The writer 

 visited and describes the ruins of the hut in which Behring and 

 his companions wintered 141 years previously, and where the 

 traveller himself died, and was buried. Llr. von Steiner com- 

 piles from Mr. Im Thurn, an account of the Indians of 

 Guiana. The usual geographical news concludes the number. 



Mr. Scott, of the Indian Survey Department, recently de- 

 livered a lecture at Calcutta on the transfrontier surveys of 

 India, in which he pointed out that 20,000 square miles on the 

 immediate north-western frontier needed exploration. Here lie 

 the Kafila routes into Afghanistan, which he much regretted 

 had not been used for tlie advance into .Afghanistan instead of 

 the hot and thirsty Bolan Pass. He suggested that the rules 

 against British officers crossing the frontier should be relaxed, 

 and that they should be permitted to accept invitations, with a 

 guarantee of safety, by native ofhcers to their homei across the 

 border. 



The death of Col. Obiigado, of the Argentine Army, on 

 September 22 at Buenos Ayres is announced. In recent years 

 he had made many scientific explorations on the coasts and in 

 the interior of Patagonia. He traversed the forests in the basins 

 of the Negro, Limay, and Nanquen rivers, which had never 

 l)een explored before ; and several places in these regions now 

 bear his name. His death was due to ill-health, caused by his 

 jr>urneys in Patagonia. 



The last issue of the MittheHiiuiien of the Geographical 

 Society of Vienna contains two papers on the Carolines ; one by 

 Prof Blumentritt describing the historical relations of Spain to 

 the archipelago. He makes more interesting quotations from 

 books used in Spanish schools, m which the Carolines are men- 

 tioned amongst the colonies of .Spain, and the usual elementary 

 school-book information is given about them. The secretary to 

 the Society also gives a map of the group, with much geo- 

 graphical and other information respecting them. Herr Jtilg 

 concludes his paper on the erosive action of the sea, and the 

 usual current geographical information brings the number (Band 

 xxviii. , No. 10) to a conclusion. 



THE SCOTTISH METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY 

 A T a meeting of the Directors of the Ben Nevis Observatory 

 ■^ held on October 30, it was intimated that during the 

 summer Prof. Ewing, of Dundee, had visited the Observatory to 

 make arrangements for the observations on earthquakes and 

 earth movements which it had been resolved to carry on there. 

 Prof. Vernon Harcouvt and Mr. Harold Dickson, both of 

 Oxford, also spent some time at the Observatory conducting 

 experiments and observations on the intensity of light in flames, 

 it being necessary, in connection with the important practical 

 question of a satisfactory determination of the light-giving 

 qualities of coal gas supplied to the public, to make experiments 

 on such a situation as Ben Nevis, where barometric pressure is 

 low. Mr. H. N. Dickson resided two months at the Observa- 

 tory, being chiefly engaged in carrying out, under the superin- 

 tendence of Prof. Tait and Mr. Buchan, a valuable series of 

 observations and experiments on the methods of observing the 

 temperature and humidity of the air. For this purpose the 

 season was a singularly suitable one, on account of the extremes 

 of temperatures and humidities the weather presented during 

 the summer on the Ben. As regards the humidity, where there 

 were of course abundant opportunities of studying the behaviour 

 of the instruments in an atmosphere completely saturated 

 through a wide range of temperature, many cases occurred of 

 excessive and protracted dryness of the atmosphere. On one 

 occasion, in September, no deposition of dew took place on 



