TKANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 203 



of one-iucli Orduauce Maps, ou paper folded into a pocket form, to be sold at the 

 -Head Post-offices of the United Kingdom, 700 or thereabouts in number, each office 

 keeping in stock the maps of the district in which it is situated ; and the other to 

 obtain a reduced Ordnance Map of the Idngdon:, on the scale of about 5 miles to an 

 inch, to fulfil all the purposes of a road-map, and to be sold throughout the country at 

 the post-offices, in the way I have just described. 



I will now conclude my address, having sufficiently taxed your patience, and beg 

 you to join with me in welcoming, with your best attention,' the eminent Geogra- 

 jphers whose communications are about to be submitted to your notice. 



The Euplirates-Valley Eoute to India. By "VV. P. Andrew. 



. In the opening portion of his paper the author dilated upon the many noble 

 objects which the proposed railway to India, via the Euphrates Valley, would 

 subserve. It would inevitably entail the colonization and civilizatian of the great 

 valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, restore the old and renowned productiveness 

 of Mesopotamia, and resuscitate in modern shape Babylon, Nineveh, and Ctesiphon. 

 He argued that no direct route to India, amongst the many which had been pro- 

 posed, combined so many advantages as the ancient route of the Euphrates. It is 

 the shortest and the cheapest, both for constructing and working a railway, — so 

 free from engineering difficulties, that it appears as though designed by nature 

 for the highway of nations between the East and the West ; it is the most surely 

 defensible by England, both its termini being on the open sea, and the most likely 

 to prove remimerative. The other routes proposed, such as those from places on the 

 Black Sea, were open to the fatal objection that while they would be of the 

 greatest service to Russia, they would be beyond the control of Great Britain ; they 

 were besides excluded from practical consideration by the engineering difficulties 

 they involved. These conclusions had been demonstrated by many eminent wit- 

 nesses examined before the recent Select Committee of the House of Commons. 

 The author admitted the value of a continuous line from Constantinople to India, but 

 believed it to be too vast a project to be at present undertaken. The moderate 

 scheme which he advocated was a line 900 miles in length, from the Gulf of Scan- 

 deroon, via the rif/Jd bank of the Euphrates, to Kowait, in the north-western corner 

 of the Persian. Gulf. Should it be found desirable hereafter to construct a through 

 line to India, this portion would form a ready-made and considerable section of it. 

 It was precisely that portion of the route between Constantinople and India from 

 which the greatest benefit would be derived by the substitution of railway for sea 

 transit, whether regard be had to the rate of speed or the economy with which the 

 traffic might be worked. Both the proposed termini possess all the requisites of 

 first-class harbours ; and the line, on leaving Alexandretta, would run to Aleppo, and 

 along the Euphrates, by way of Annah, Hit, Kerbela, Nedjef, Somowha, and Sheikh 

 el Shuyukh, to Kowait. The Euphrates would not be crossed, and the line would 

 have the strategic advantage of two great rivers being interposed between it and 

 an advancing^ enemy on the fiank on which there would be the greatest likelihood 

 of danger arising. The cost of the railway was estimated at £9,000,000 sterling. 

 The advantages of the proposed railway to England would be the possession of an 

 alternative route to India and the saving of nearly 1000 miles in linear distance. 



On the Orography of the Chain of the Great Atlas. 

 By John Ball, F.R.S., F.L.S. 



The representations of the chain of the Great Atlas given on the most modern 

 maps show how very vague and incomplete our knowledge still is. Thev agree in 

 very little beyond the fact that high mountains extend in a nearly direct'line from 

 the west coast, where they approach the Atlantic, near Agadir, in about .'30° 30' N. 

 lat., for about GOO miles inland, where they subside at no great distance from the 

 frontier of Algeria about the parallel of ?m° 30'. 



All but the most recent maps indicate a single range similar in g-eneral character 



