418 
<« Seven Sisters” caves it will be carried by a suspension bridge 
of novel design, 200 feet long. At another place is a swing 
bridge, suggested by the famous rope bridge of Carrick-a-Rede ; 
here it is no ‘rock in the road” of the salmon, but a deep 
gully into a wide cave, ‘‘in the road” of the climber. From 
the path, seals have been seen almost every day in early 
August ; on one day porpoises were rolling about close inshore, 
and otters are known to have haunted the place from time 
immemorial. Some of the fish bones found in digging out a 
cave which was hidden by a great slip of basalt about forty 
years ago may be due to otters. Others of birds and mammals 
certainly are not, but have the appearance of the broken bones 
so plentiful in the prehistoric middens of Antrim and Down. 
‘These were found under from 400 to 500 tons of boulders, partly 
consolidated with earthy matrix, taken out of the cave, and are 
now in the hands of the Cave Fauna Committee investigating 
the Irish cave-deposits. The northern end of the path may not 
be completed this season, heavy gales having much delayed the 
work, and the tunnel which it will be necessary to excavate in 
hard reck at a place where the cliff overhangs very much will 
take some months to complete. 
The first part of the path, that along the picturesque under- 
cliff south of the cliffs section, was completed last year ; there 
the Upper Chalk may be seen in large masses, broken up and 
slipping over the soft underlying Lias Clay, some sections of 
which are exposed, with, in a few places, good sections of 
Chloritic Chalk, Yellow Sands and Marls, and Glauconitic 
Sands. Details of these sections with lists of their fossil fauna 
will be found in Dr. Hume’s classical paper on the Cretaceous 
strata of co, Antrim (Q. 7. Geol. Soc., November, 1897, pp. 
557-560, pl. xliv. and xlv.). The Basalts, I am afraid, have 
not received the attention here which they deserve, but now 
that these inaccessible cliffs, tier upon tier of thin lava flows 
weathering in the most varied manner, can by this new path 
ibe easily reached from the land, it is to be hoped they 
will be visited by many geologists in the near future. The 
Memoir of the Geological Survey, Ireland, No. 29, gives a 
‘brief description of them, with section at south termination. 
‘One may dine in London or Manchester, and by the 
short sea route v2? Stranraer breakfast in Larne or White- 
head, and be right under these cliffs long before noon. 
Mr. Wise has kept well in mind the motto of the Belfast Field 
‘Club, of which he is a member, ‘‘ Preservation, not Extinction,” 
and the herring gulls which nest along the cliffs here in large 
numbers were disturbed as little as possible ; some even nested 
on the partly made path.» He has been careful to preserve the 
natural, weathered surface of the rock all along the path; it has 
only been broken where absolutely necessary for safety, and 
geologists. are kindly requested to follow this example. They 
ill find abundance of good material quarried out at many 
places quite close to the path, including good samples of: the 
vesicular portions of the flows, with the original vesicles now 
‘filled with various zeolites. R. WELCH. 
A GREAT PERSIAN TRAVELLER. 
HE fascination which countries “ old in story ” exer- 
cise on many minds is more easily recognised than 
explained. But the existence of this fascination being 
once admitted, it is not difficult to understand why a 
peculiar glamour should attach to Persia, a land of which 
the history extends almost as far back as any authentic 
record of the human race, other than that derived from 
fossil bones or implements, can be said to exist. Nor is 
this the only attraction which Persia possesses, for 
although it is inhabited by the most civilised people of 
Asia, the greater portion of the Persian plateau was, 
until the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, 
almost unexplored by Europeans, and even at the com- 
mencement of the twentieth century no railway has 
crossed the Persian frontier, and the only road constructed 
for wheeled carriages, that from Resht to Teheran, is of 
1 “Ten Thousand Miles in Persia, or Eight Years in Iran." By Major 
Percy Molesworth Sykes (Queen's Bays), H.M. Consul, Kerman and 
Persian Baluchistan. Pp. xv + 4814 with numerous illustrations and map. 
(London: John Murray.) 
NO. 1713, VOL. 66] 
NATURE 
[Aucust 28, 1902 
no great length and is said to be in bad condition. In 
many respects the Persia of the present day resembles 
western Europe three hundred years ago, or perhaps in 
some respects even earlier. The general mode of travel 
is on horseback, the traveller's baggage and all mer- 
chandise are carried on pack animals, the roads are 
insecure and robbers abound. Even in the latter half of 
«the nineteenth century, in eastern Persia and Balu- 
chistan, raids by armed bands were of common occur- 
rence, whilst less than thirty years ago Turcoman hordes 
from the north swept over northern Persia as fdr as the 
gates of Yezd and Isfahan, and murdered, plundered or 
dragged away as slaves the unfortunate inhabitants 
whom they encountered. Almost to this day the history 
ofthe tribal chieftains and of the provincial governors in 
eastern Persia and Baluchistan resembles that of 
European princes in the middle ages, when it was 
a rare exception for any man of note to live or die 
peaceably. 
But a great change is gradually being effected in 
Persia, as in so many other countries. The Turcoman 
forays were summarily ended by Skobeleff’s sweeping 
destruction of the raiding clans at Geok-tepe, a con- 
summation aptly compared by Major Sykes to the more 
recent annihilation of the Soudanese slave-drivers at 
Omdurman. The “chapaos” of the Baluchis have been 
checked by the division of Baluchistan between Persian 
and British rule, and the frontiers between Afghanistan, 
Persia and British Baluchistan have been defined and 
mapped. The central government in Persia has gained 
power, and has been able during the last half century, 
despite many shortcomings, to do something for the 
protection of the people and the encouragement of 
agriculture and trade. 
The author of “Ten Thousand Miles in Persia” has 
consequently had the advantage of studying the country 
at an interesting time. Few of the travellers in Persia 
since the time of Alexander the Great have had better 
opportunities or been better qualified than Major Sykes, 
who is an energetic explorer, a good linguist and a 
sympathetic student of Persian life and history. Several 
portions of his travels in eastern Persia and Baluchistan 
have already been briefly described in the Geographical 
Journal, but fuller accounts are given in the present 
work, together with numerous notes on the physical 
geography, history and people of the countries traversed. 
The various journeys of the author are not confined to 
eastern Persia. At one time or another he has traversed 
all the principal routes, including the well-known road 
from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian by Shiraz, Isfahan 
and Teheran ; but, as he points out in his preface, he 
has touched but lightly on the provinces and cities of 
Persia that were fully dealt with in Lord Curzon’s work, 
and has chiefly treated of those parts of the country, in 
eastern Persia and Baluchistan, that were previously 
less well known. A very large part of the book treats of 
journeys and researches of various kinds in the province 
of Kerman and in Persian Baluchistan, but in the execu- 
tion of consular duties interesting visits were made to 
Sistan and Kain in one direction, and to the Persian Gulf, 
Basra (Bussorah) and Shuster in the other. 
The additions made by Major Sykes to our knowledge 
of the geography of eastern Persia and Baluchistan are 
numerous, and they have in many cases greatly changed 
the map. For instance, by ascertaining that the stream 
flowing past Bampur does not reach the sea by the 
Rapsh, but is, like so many other Persian rivulets, 
evaporated in a “ kavir,” or salt marsh, he has added at 
least 20,000 square miles'to the Persian inland drainage 
area, from which no water flows to the ocean. He has 
also aided materially in completing the investigation of 
the great desert region of Khorassan, called Dasht-i- 
Kavir or Dasht-i-Lut in maps. He shows that the name 
