180 REPORT — 1871. 



and from thence saw across the Sus valley to the southward. The snowj' axi^ 

 here approaches to within some fifteen miles of the foot of the mountains, and 

 consists of more isolated tops and far less steep ridges, though snow came down 

 to 8000 feet on northern exposm-es. The floor of the valley, like the otliers, is 

 very narrow, and clothed with walnut and olive cultivation, threaded by a 

 brawlino- stream. The valleys of the upper feeders of the Wad en Fys occu}3y 

 an area^probably not less than twenty miles broad. Dr. Hooker saw no forest in 

 anv part of the range, clumps of brushwood and isolated stumps of oak, juniper, 

 carob and ash being all that remain of the primaeval woods. These mountains are 

 extremely bare ; even moss and lichens are poor and rare compared with what other 

 alpine and subalpine regions present. Low as is the latitude of Marocco, its vege- 

 tation shows that the North Atlantic detennines its climate, favouring the dis- 

 persion of northern types up to the tops of the Atlas, and forbidding the entrance 

 of southern forms that elsewhere prevail in similar latitudes. From Amsmiz the 

 party continued to travel along the base of the Atlas, and made some minor 

 ascents, obtaining a general idea of the character of the chain in this longitude 

 (8° W.), where there is another broad depression, through which the road runs 

 from Marocco to Tarodaut in the Sus valley — a place once of immense commercial 

 importance, and still one of great resort. The party returned to Mogadore on the 

 3rd of June, and succeeded in bringing their collections safely with them, which 

 will enable Dr. Hooker to elucidate the flora of a hitherto almost unknown region. 

 The Moors and Arabs of Marocco are described as being vile beyond a proverb. 

 The Government is despotic, cruel, and wrong-headed in every sense. From the 

 Sultan to the lowest soldier all are paid by squeezing those in their power. Ma- 

 rocco itself is more than half ruinous, and its prisons are loaded. The popidation 

 of the whole country is diminishing ; and what Avith droughts, locusts, and cho- 

 lera, and prohibitory" edicts of the most arbitrary description, the interior is on the 

 brink of ruin. But that two thirds of the kingdom is independent of the Sidtan's 

 authority, being held by able mountain chiefs who defy his power to tax or inter- 

 fere with them, and that the European merchants maintain the coast trade, and 

 the Consuls keep the Sultan's emissaries in check, Marocco would present a scene 

 of the wildest disorder. 



A Journey from Yassin to Yarhand. Bij InRAniM Kitajt, 



Interior of Melran. By Captain B. Lovett. 



Nule on ihe Geograpliical Distribution of Petroleum ctncl all ied products. 

 By Colonel R. Maclagan, ll.E., F.R.8.E., F.B.G.S. 



The extent and variety of the uses to which petroleum and other allied pro- 

 ducts have come to be applied, and the vast quantities in which, within the last 

 few years, thej- have been obtained, give a special interest and importance to the 

 observation of their geographical range and positions. The places are numerous, 

 and the circumstances varied, in which these substances, in some one or other of 

 their forms, have for long ages been Icnown. 



The classification of these products having certain general common characters, 

 and probably a similar origin, is not now essentially different from tliat of Liunreus, 

 and exhibits relationships before recognized in a less formal and systematic way by 

 Pliny and others *. They belong to LiuniBus's class of "inflammable minerals," 

 consisting, according to his arrangement, of bitumens, coals, amber, and amber- 

 gris. Tlie bitumens he specifies as fluid bitumen or n.aphtha, rock-oil or petro- 

 leum, mineral tar or maltha, mineral pitch or nuimia, asphalt, mineral tallow, 

 elastic bitumen, and hard bitumen or jet. And next to the bitumens and coals 

 he places honey-stone (found associated with asphalt), common amber, and amber- 

 gris. Prof. Archer, in a paper on the oil-wells of Pennsylvania and Canada (Art 



* Pliny, N. H. lib, xxxv. ; Strabo, xvi. ; Herod, ri. 119, &c. 



