April 7, 1887] 



NA TURE 



547 



Variable Stars 

 R.A. Decl. 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES 



Mr. George Grenfell has recently made a successful 

 ascent of the great Qii.\ngo tributary of the Congo. In company 

 with Mr. Bentley, in the steamer Peace, he succeeded in reaching 

 the Kikunji Falls, the point at which Major von Mechow, 

 descending the Quango from the south, was obliged to turn back 

 in 1880. About six miles above the junction of the Kasai and 

 the Quango they found another large tributary, the Djunia, 

 entering the river from the east, which presented so great a 

 volume of water that it was a matter of uncertainty which was 

 the larger stream. A little beyond this the course of the Quango 

 veered round, first south-south-west, and then west ; at 4' 30' S. 

 lat. it had come back to its usual northerly course, and main- 

 tained it for the remainder of the journey. The Kikunji Falls 

 (5° 8' S. lat.) are about 3 feet high, and though insurmount- 

 able to the Peace, are said by Mr. Grenfell to be no obstacle to 

 communication by canoes and small craft. 



In a letter from the Rev. W. G. Lawes, dated Port Moresby, 

 January 20, it is stated that .an Expedition is being equipped 

 under the leadership of Mr. Vogan, the Curator of the Auck- 

 land Museum, with the intention of attempting, as soon as the 

 rainy season was over, to cross South-East New Guinea, from 

 Freshwater Bay to Huon Gulf. 



The .Vpril number of the Proceedings of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical .Society is Largely devoted to papers on Central Asia. 

 First we have Mr. Delmar Morgan's account of Prjeva^ky's 

 journeys and discoveries in Central Asia. Mr. Morgan also 

 contributes a translation in abstract of a recent lecture by M. 

 Potanin on his journey in North-Western China and Eastern 

 Tibet, which is followed by an account of the travels of Messrs. 

 James, Younghusband, and Fulford in Northern and Eastern Man- 

 churia. In this last will be fouml some welcome details concerning 

 of the country not previously described. 



Acci^RDING to Dr. Il.ans Schinz, who has been recently in the 

 Lake Ngami region, that lake is not dried up, though its dimcu- 

 sions are gradually decreasing. The River Okovango forms an 

 extensive marsh on the norlh-west, which sends very little water 

 a part into the lake during the dry season. 



I.N a paper by Dr. Ochsenius in the Zeilschri/t of the Berlin 

 Geological Society, on the age of certain parts of the South 

 American Andes, are some details of geographical and ethno- 

 logical interest. The author believes that the South American 

 Cordillera.s, or at least a portion of them, are no older than the 

 Quaternary (as contrasted with the certainly older co.ast Cor- 

 dilleras), and infers, therefore, that Lake Titicaca and the 

 surrounding region must have been raised to its present eleva- 



tion of about 13,000 feet within the historical period. Dr. 

 Ochsenius therefore maintains that the enormous ruins of the 

 old Inca city Tihuanaco on tlwt lake admit of no other explana- 

 tion than that these colossal monoliths were not worked at their 

 present elevation, far le-s transported ihilher ; it is incredible 

 that the highly civilised Incas w ould have located their em- 

 porium on a tableland now almost uninhabitable. The author 

 supi)orls his conclusions by the fact that representatives of the 

 Pacific fauna still live in Lake Titicaca. 



News of Herr G. A. Krause, who is now investigating the 

 district between the Gold Coast and Timbuctoo, has reached 

 Berlin. The traveller arrived at Woghodogho, the capital of 

 Mosi, in October 1886. He obtained permission from the 

 King of Mosi to continue his journey in a northerly direction 

 to Duensa, on his way to Timbuctoo. He hoped to reach the 

 former place in seventeen or eighteen days, to arrive at Sarafaram 

 in four or five days more, and then to tlescend the Niger to 

 Kabara, the port of Timbuctoo. Herr Krause describes the 

 country between Salanga and the capital of Mosi as being per- 

 fectly plain at first, and then followed by a district of low hills 

 and another plain. A day's journey north of Walawala, the 

 traveller crossed the Upper Volta, the source of which lies 

 probably in a north-easterly direction. 



ON CERTAIN MODERN DEVELOPMENTS OF 

 GRAHAM'S IDEAS CONCERNING THE 

 CONSTITUTION OF MATTER"- 

 H. 

 A QU.\RTER of a century has elapsed since Gr.iham formu- 

 ^^ lated his conceptions concerning the constitution of matter. 

 I wi^h now to indicate, as briefly as may be, how these con- 

 ceptions have developed during these five-and- twenty years. 



The idea of the essential unity of matter has a singular fascina- 

 tion for the human mind. It may be that it has its germ in the 

 persistency with which every mind, even that of a child, seeks to 

 get at first principles. The most superficial reader of the history 

 of intellectual evolution cannot fail to perceive how greatly it has 

 modified and directed the development of scientific thought. 

 The whole course of chemistry, for example, has been controlled 

 by this fundamental conception. The half-educated student of 

 to-day may smile at the notion of the transmutation of the 

 metals which held such sway over the minds of the early 

 alchemists, but the men who followed this " fi;nis fatttiis " with 

 weary faltering steps, and who frequently sank under the burden 

 of disappointed hope and the sense that to them it was not given 

 to know the light, felt that this idea rested on a rational basis. 

 They, like «e, could give a reason for the faith that was in 

 them. And yet no article of scientific doctrine has in these 

 later times suffered greater vicissitude. Men's ideas concerning 

 the essential unity of things must have received a rude shock 

 when it was found that such a thing as water was not only com- 

 plex, but was made of bodies strangely contrasted in properties ; 

 that the air was still less simple in composition ; and that, as it 

 appeared, almost every form of earth could, by torture, be made 

 to give up .some dissimilar thing. The brilliant discoveries of 

 D.ivy, which made the early years of this century an epoch in the 

 history of science, seemed to open out a vista to which there was 

 no conceivable ending. The order of things was not towards 

 simplification : it tended rather towards complexity. And yet 

 Davy himself seemed unable or unwilling to push his way along 

 the path of which the world regarded him as the pioneer. It 

 may be that he was unable to shake himself free from the 

 domination of the schoolmen, or that he unconsciously felt the 

 truth of the principles to which his own discoveries seemed 

 opposed. It is difficult otherwise to account for the tardiness 

 with which he accepted the hypothesis of Dalton ; even to the 

 last the Daltonian atom had nothing distinctive to Davy beyond 

 its combining weight. Davy never wholly committed himself 

 to a belief in the indivisibility of the atom : that indivisibility 

 was the very essence of Dalton's creed. In arguing with a 

 friend concerning the principle of multiple proportion, Dalton 

 would clinch the discussion by some .such statement as " Thou 

 knows it must be so, for no man can split an atom." Even 

 Thomas Thomson, whom I have already characterised as the 



' Tlie Triennial " Graliam Lecture," given in the Hall of the Andersonian 

 Institution, Glasgow, on March 16, by Prof. T. E. Thorpe, F.R.S. Con- 

 tinued from p. 524. 



