TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 169 
time at work, and will doubtless collect sufficient data for the solution of the many 
interesting questions connected with the former courses of the Amu and the Syr. 
As an English officer (Major Wood, R.E.) is said to have accompanied one of the 
expeditions, we may hope for early information respecting the results of the expe- 
dition. Amongst the features of the year is the number of interesting works either 
ee or about to be so: works by Mr. MacGahan on the Khivan Campaign, 
y Sir F. Goldsmid on Persia and the Persian Telegraph have appeared; and we are 
promised works on Central Asia by Mr. Dilke and Mr. Schuyler. Capt. Prjewalski 
1s engaged on an account of his journey to Thibet, and the Russian Government are 
preparing an official account of the Khivan campaign. 
In Australia the great geographical event of the year has been Colonel Warburton’s 
journey from Alice Springs, near Mount Stuart, on the line of overland telegraph, to 
Rocbourne, in Nickol Bay, for which he was awarded the Patron’s Gold Medal of the 
Royal Geographical Society. Such particulars of the journey as have been 
forwarded to me through the courtesy of the Colonial Office and of Mr. Dutton, the 
Agent-General for South Australia, will be communicated to you. By the latest 
accounts Mr. Forrest, whose name is so well known in connexion with Australian 
exploration, had left the hitherto explored parts of Western Australia for the 
Central Telegraph line. Mr. Forrest’s route was to be from Champion Bay by 
Mount Luke to Mount Gould on the Murchison River. 
An account of the travels of Mr. Miklucho-Maclay, the Russian naturalist, in 
New Guinea has recently been published at St. Petersburg, and will, I hope, appear 
in an English form, as the importance of New Guinea, lying on what will be the 
great trade-route from Australia to China, is daily becoming more apparent. 
In America, whilst the coast and inland surveys have been progressing, Dr. 
Haydon, who was the first to disclose to us the strange beauties of the Yellow- 
stone region, has been engaged in exploring a country equally wild and picturesque, 
the eastern half of Colorado, where a vast number of sandstone peaks, presenting 
an extraordinary variety of form and colowr, rise up to heights of from 12,000 to 
14,000 feet. Other expeditions have been doing good service in the Yellowstone 
country, Arizona, Oregon, and the Aleutian Islands, amongst them one sent out by 
Yale College, which, besides exploring new country, brought back five tons of speci- 
mens from the great fossil beds of Oregon and other places for the College museum. 
I cannot help thinking that in sending out these expeditions (for this is only one 
of a series) for the examination of the geography, geology, botany, zoology, &e. of 
some special district, Yale College has set an example which might well be fol- 
lowed by our own universities, and that Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge might 
take more part than they have hitherto done in what may be called scientific 
exploration in the field. In the north the survey of the interoceanic railway 
through British territory has been completed, and my old friend and fellow traveller 
Captain Anderson, R.E., has been engaged, as chief astronomer of the International 
Boundary Commission, in running the forty-ninth parallel through the unknown 
country between the Missouri and Puskedtahan at and a short account of the demarca- 
tion of the parallel and the country through which it passes will be read to you. 
In the south Commanders Lull and Selfridge have found practicable routes for 
ship-canals, from Greytown by Lake Nicaragua to Brito on the Pacific, and by way 
of the Atrato from the Gulf of Darien to a point near Cupica on the Pacific ; the 
cost of the latter is estimated at twelve million pounds. 
In South America Professor Orton has been extending our knowledge of the 
Amazon country; and I may mention the activity which the Peruvian Govern- 
ment are showing in promoting the exploration of the little-known districts of 
Peru. Mr. Hutchinson, late Her Majesty’s Consul at Callao, will read a paper 
“On the Commercial, Industrial, and Natural Resources of Peru,” which will be 
found to contain much interesting information respecting that country. 
Dr. Carpenter will, I hope, give us some account of the cruise of Her Majesty’s 
ship ‘Challenger,’ which cannot fail to interest the people of this town from Pro- 
fessor Wyville Thomson’s former connexion with it. 
Captain Warren, R.E., whose name is so well known from his work at Jeru- 
salem, has forwarded a valuable paper “On Reconnaissance in Unknown Countries ;” 
and Captain Abney, R.E., will read one on a subject which he has made pecu- 
1874. 
