4i6 



NA TURE 



\_Feb. 28, I i 



and in 1882 and 1883 unsuccessful attempts were made to reach 

 them. This year four vessels will be sent out, one of them 

 H.M.S. Alerl, which we are glad to know has been presented 

 for the purpose of the search to the United States Gavernment. 

 It is to be expected that witli such a formidable expedition the 

 Greeley party will be reached, and we fervently hope brouijht 

 home, though it is to be feared that some at least must have 

 succumbed to the hardships of three winters id 81" N. 



The fourth German Geographical Congress will meet at 

 Munich from April 17 to 19 next. The preparations are now 

 being made. The main subjects for discussion are : the present 

 state of Polar investigation ; the innovations relating to the 

 standard meridian ; the Glacial epoch ; and the mode of drawing 

 large-sized maps for schools. Numerous travellers and in- 

 vestigators have promised to read papers. 



Dr. Wild of St. Petersburg, the President of the International 

 Polar Commission, is now sending out invitations for the 

 Polar Congress which is to meet at Vienna on April 22 next. 

 All the leaders of the International Polar Expeditions of 1SS2 

 are expected to attend. 



Dr. Zintgraff of Berlin is about to follow Dr. Chavanne 

 to the Congo, by order of the Brussels National Geographical 

 Institute. His special investigations are to be of an ethnological 

 nature. 



Herr L. Steineger informs Naturen that his fortni.jht's 

 stay in Kamchatka in May, 1803, proved fairly satisfactory. 

 The co;nplete success of the expedition was, however, interfered 

 with by the exceptionally late snowfalls, which had buried the 

 whole district round Petropaulovski under a layer of six to nine feet 

 of snow, the surface of which melted daily under the scorching 

 sun only to be frozen again at night. Among other interesting 

 points he has noted the presence of four distinct species of the 

 sea-eagle in Kamchatka, while Europe and the whole of the 

 North American continent had only one species of this magni- 

 ficent bird. One of these four, which Herr Steineger has 

 named HalLcclus hypoleucus, is distinguished from H. leuco- 

 cefihalus, 11. albicilla, and the giant Thalasstctiis pelagicus, by 

 the dazzling whiteness of some parts of the body and its generally 

 lighter colour. Herr Steineger's collections, which have been sent 

 onto Washington, include the bones of a complete skeleton of the 

 sea-cow, seventeen sea-calves, three skins of the Kamchatkan 

 Alpine sheep, a considerable number of crania of the Cetacea, 

 of which three would appear to bel nig to new species. Beside; 

 these and some 700 skins of birds, with a large number of maai- 

 malian crania, he sends back a large and interesting collection 

 of fish, cru.taceani, land and freshwater moUusk--, and numerous 

 fossil and living plants. 



After having done so much in restoring to our maps the old 

 bed of the Amu-daria, the Russian explorers seem to be in- 

 clined now to take a quite opposite view. Thus, Prince Hed- 

 roits, geologist of the Amu daria Expedition of 1880, after 

 having explored the eastern part of the Uzboy, came to the con- 

 clusion that the total want of river-beds in the ravine and the 

 presence of Aral-Caspian moUusks in it are a sufficient pro if 

 that the water of the Amu never ran on the stretch between 

 the Sary-kaaiysh lakes and the Caspian. Now, M. Konshin — 

 a mining engineer who has recently explored the western part of 

 the Uzboy — arrives independently at the same conclusion with 

 regard to the western part of the supposed old bed of the Amu. 

 He considers that its passage between the Greater and the 

 Smaller Balkhan Mountains is a recent strait of the Aral-Caspian 

 Sea, and that the western part of the Uzboy is merely a remnant 

 of the outtlow towards the Caspian of the brackish water of the 

 Sara-kamysh lakes. The ravine of the Uzboy would be thus 

 one of the numerous sors, or elongated lakes, the likeness of 

 which to beds of rivers had already struck Pallas in the 

 Astrakhan steppes, where the Daban-gol has a length of sixty 

 miles. The view of M. Konshin may be summed up as fol- 

 lows : — The immense Sara-kamysh depression, 4400 miles wide, 

 and at some places 2S0 feet below the level of the Aral, formerl 

 at a geologically recent time a single basin with the Aral ; the 

 fossils found on its borders show that it was filled up with at 

 least brackish water. This lake had an outflow into the Cas- 

 pian ; but for 130 miles west of Sara-kamysh there is nothing 

 like a river-bed. The likeness begins only west of Balla-Ishem, 

 where the Uzboy begins. This channel, however, was filled up, 

 not with the sweet and muddy water of the Amu, but with a 



brackish and rather pure water of the Aral-Sara-kamysh Lake. 

 In fact, in this channel, on its whole stretch from Balla-Ishem 

 to the Caspian, one finds everywhere the typical Aral-Caspian 

 CarJila, Dreyssena, Ncritina, and Hydrobia in the most perfect 

 state, whilst there are no traces at all of a fluviatile flora or 

 fauna, nor any traces of human settlements. However opposite 

 to current opinion, this view of the Uzboy surely has much to 

 be said in its favour. 



The same geologist publishes in the Izveslia of the Russian 

 Geographical Society an interesting account of his explorations 

 in the Kara-kum desert, between Kyzyl-arvat and Khiva. He 

 considers the bad reputation of this desert quite exaggerated. In 

 the neighbourhood of the Caspian and Lake Aral the Kara-kum 

 sands offer a great many difliculties to the traveller. Geologi- 

 cally speaking they have quite recently emerged from the sea, 

 and the barklians, or sandy hills, are devoid of vegetation and 

 move freely before the wind ; the same is true with regard to the 

 neighbourhood of Sara-kainysh and the Uzboy. But farther in 

 the steppe the sands are older, and the brushes which cover them 

 render them cjuite stable, so that the Akhal-Tekkes like better 

 to stay in the steppe, and return to the oasis only for the needs 

 of agriculture. Tlie routes are quite comfortaljle, with exclusion 

 of sleeper ascents and descents on the slopes of the (''a?-,('/;rt«j; 

 and the cisterns (I:aks) when kept in order contain plenty of 

 water ; while the steppe yields throughout the year abundance of 

 food for the horses and camels. The baiklians are often inter- 

 mingled with iakyrs, that is, with places covered with firm clay, 

 on whjse sui face small canals collect rain-water and bring it to 

 a common basin called kak. The sors, or elongated ravines, the 

 sandy bottom of which is impregnated with brackish water, are 

 most numerous, especially in certain parts of the steppe ; in the 

 neighliourhood of the Akhal-Tekke oasis they run in numerous 

 parallel lines for several dozen miles in length. The Uzboy, 

 which M. Konshin visited at Kuriysh, is a ravine, sometimes 

 crossed by hills of sand, at the bottom of which one perceives 

 a narrow serpentine of brackish water. The Tertiary beds are 

 covered there with a fine dirty dust filled with rer.ains of 

 the Aral-Caspian Dreyssena, Neritina, and Cardiuin. Above 

 Kurty^h the uppjsed old bed of the Amu can be distinguished 

 only by these marine remains. Notu ithstanding the most careful 

 search, M. Konshin faded to di-cover any traces of fluviatile 

 deposits at Shikh, where the Charjuy bed of the Amu is traced 

 on our maps. The hills at Shikh are remarkable as a rich mine 

 of very pure sulphur (62 per cent.) One of them would contain 

 at least i6o,oco,ooo cwt. of pure sulphur, and sulphur appears 

 on the sitrface of very many of them. 



Dr. Regal, travelling fur the Geographical Society in Central 

 Asia, has returned to Tashkend through Sarafshan and Samar- 

 cand, after visiting Hissar, the Mura Pass— never before explored 

 — the town of Karatag, and Baldshan, Duway, Rushan, and 

 Shignan. Dr. Regal intends to start again in a few weeks for 

 Baldshan, and in the spring to continue his explorations as far as 

 the Kashgar frontiers. 



Colonel Prejevalsky, with his Cossacks, must be now in 

 Mongolia, on his way towards Thibet. The other well-known 

 explorer of the Turcoman region of the Transcaspian, M. Lessar, 

 is ag in on his way to the scene of his geographical triumphs 

 along the Persian frontier to complete his work for the General 

 Staff. lie will probably be absent another year or a year and 

 a half. 



The Director of the Russian Observatory at Peking, Dr. 

 Frittche, w ho made last winter a journey through Southern China, 

 from Peking to Kai fong-fu on the Huan-Lo, has determmed on 

 his route the positions and the magnetic elements of forty-six 

 places. A few days after his return to Peking he left again and 

 went, via Changhai kuan, on the Gulf of Pe clie-li, to Tsitsigar 

 Mergen, Aihun, and Blagovejchensk, on the Amur, determining 

 the positions and magnetical elements of sixty three new joints. 



A correspondent in Naturen draws attention to a curious 

 narrative of an expedition to high northern lalitiides, undertaken 

 in 1266, at the instigation of priests belonging to the Moiuastery 

 of Garde in Greenland. This narrative is derived from an Ice- 

 landic transcript of the so-called " Hauksbok," compiled about 

 1300 by the Norsk law-expounder, Hank Erlandsiin. It must 

 be observed, however, that the particulars of the Garde Expe- 

 dition are not to be found in the still extant parts of the original 

 manucript of the " Haukslok," from which various pages have 



