March 18, 1880] 



NATURE 



477 



of fifteen miles from Altyn-mazar. The length of this glacier 

 is not le-s than twenty to twenty-five miles, and it is fed with 

 several other glaciers of very large size. The oscillations in its 

 length have a great importance, as sometimes it advances so 

 far into the valley as completely to bar up the valley of the 

 affluent of Sel-su, the Baland-kiik ; this last thence forms a 

 wide base which afterwards cuts through a passage in the ice and 

 inundates the main valley, destroying the forests ; now the 

 glacier is once more in advance, and has nearly barred up the 

 valley of the Baland-kiik. M. Oshanin proposes to give to this 

 glacier— probably the second or third in size in Central Asia — 

 the name of " Fedtchenkoglacier." As to the vegetation of its 

 neighbourhood, it is very poor, the bottom of the valley being 

 covered only w ith brushes of Tamaris and Atraphaxis, whilst 

 the lateral valley of the Bahnd-kiik, although far higher than 

 that uf Sel-su, is covered with rich forests and grass. The 

 season was too late for affording opportunities to collect insects, 

 but M. Oshanin observed immense quantities of the Micro- 

 plnx interrupta, Fieb., in the neighbourhood of Altyn-mazar. 

 This Oxycermina, which is characteristic of the southern parts 

 of the paleoarctic region in Europe, reaches in Central Asia such 

 heights as in the Alps and Pyrenees are occupied with representa- 

 tives of the Arctic zone. After having uselessly attempted to 

 penetrate further into the high regions at the sources of the 

 Baland-kiik, M. Oshanin was compelled to return, having thrown 

 but a glance on this region of glaciers. 



N0RDENSKJ0LD has met with a warm reception at Lisbon. 

 We have already spoken of the honour done him at Naples, and 

 the honours which await him iu France. Amsterdam has invited 

 him, Copenhagen will intercept him on his way home, and in 

 S weden he w ill doubtless receive a worthy reception. What is our 

 own Geographical Society to do? We hear of no preparations 

 being made for the reception of one of the greatest and most modest 

 of explorers. Wherever he has touched, Nordenskjbld has had 

 honours showered upon him by the governments of the country ; 

 but w e suppose it would be " bad form " in an English govern- 

 ment to show anything like enthusiasm on behalf of science ; 

 though there is no saying, the Swedish explorer may, after all, 

 became the fa ; hion for a week. 



At the meeting of the Geographical Society on Monday next, 

 Mr. E. Hutchinson, the Lay Secretary of the Church Missionary 

 Society, w ill read a paper on the ascent of the Binue branch of 

 the Niger, by the missionary steamer Henry Venn, in August of 

 last year, supplementing his account of this exploration by 

 remarks on the systems of Rivers Shari and Binue. 



We understand that the Free Church of Scotland have 

 received from Mr. James Stewart, C.E., of Livingstonia, an 

 account of his recent exploratory journey from the head of Lake 

 Nyassa, to the south end of Lake Tanganyika, where he arrived 

 on the afternoon of November 5. Great interest will attach to 

 this report, as we believe that for two-thirds of the way Mr. 

 Stewart's route was considerably to the westward of Mr. 

 Thomson's, and that he met with much less difficult country, 

 and which had, in fact, a very gradual rise and descent. This, 

 no doubt, will account for the erroneous statement first received 

 by telegram from Mozambique, that Mr. Thomson had found 

 the country level between the two lakes. 



The principal original paper in the new number (S5) of the 

 Zsitschrift of the Berlin Geographical Society is the interesting 

 journal of the late Dr. Erwin von Bary, kept during his j inrney 

 from Tripoli to Ghat and Air. There is a fine new map of the 

 Fagiiui, by Dr. Schweinfurth, after the survey of Rousseau Lley, 

 in 1671 ; Dr. Schweinfurth promises a paper discussing several 

 points connected with the geography of the district. In No. 27 

 of the Verhandluttge* Dr. Rohlfs furnishes an account of his 

 recent journey to the Oasis of Kufra; a series of barometrical 

 nent of heights, of Col. Frjevalsky, in Central Asia, is 

 given. 



With the current number of Les Missions Ca!/io/ii/ues is issued 

 an interesting map of a portion of Eastern Equatorial Africa, which 

 has been prepared by Fere F. Charmetaut, who went to Africa to 

 organise the first Algerian missionary expedition to the lake 

 region. The features of the country between the coast and Lake 

 Tanganyika are shown in considerable detail, and the routes 

 followed by the Algerian missionaries to Ujiji and Lake Victoria 

 are also laid down, l'ere Charmetaut bases his map to some 

 extent on special information which he claimed to have obtained 

 in Africa. 



We regret to hear that Tere Kuellan, who was a member of 

 the second Algerian missionary expedition to East Central Africa, 

 died at Tahora, on November 24, of typhoid fever. Before 

 leaving for Zanzibar last summer, l'ere Kuellan, with one of his 

 colleagues, was sent to Paris to the Natural History Museum, 

 and the Montsouris Observatory, in order to take lessons in 

 practical geography, astronomy, natural history, &c. Pere 

 Ruellan promised to be an energetic geographer, for on the 

 journey to Mpwapwa his first thought on arriving in camp was 

 always to determine the position of the locality, and he looked 

 forward to being able to render useful service to the science of 

 ethnography in Eastern Africa. 



Dr. Matteucci, the well-known Italian traveller, who 

 recently left Rome on a journey of exploration in Africa, in 

 company with Prince Borghese, has arrived in Cairo, where he 

 has had the good fortune to meet Mgr. Guillaume Massaja. 

 From Mgr. Massaja's long practical know ledge of Abyssinia and 

 the Galla country, Dr. Matteucci would, no doubt, obtain from 

 him much valuable information respecting those regions, which 

 Italian travellers are beginning to affect as their own particular 

 field of exploration. 



From the Colonies ani India we learn that a scientific survey 

 of the district of the Chaudiere River, in Canada, is ab .ait to be 

 made in search of the deposits of gold which are said to have 

 been found on both banks of the river. The country is chiefly 

 forest land, and some of the timber-getters there have met with 

 nuggets of gold. The River Chaudiere rises some 120 miles 

 south of Quebec, and empties into the St. Lawrence, nearly 

 opposite that city. 



The January number of the Boletin of the Madrid Geo - 

 graphical Society is largely occupied with three Memoirs, 

 accompanied by two excellent charts of the Passage Islands, in 

 the West Indies, two of the Memoirs being devoted to the 

 Island of Culebra. 



ON THE BAROMETRIC SEE-SAW BETWEEN 

 RUSSIA AND INDIA IN THE SUN-SPOT 

 CYCLE 

 TN his Report on the Meteorology of India in 1877, Mr. Eliot 

 ■*- drew attention to the fact that throughout that year the 

 pressure of the atmosphere, as shown by the barometric registers 

 of all parts of India, was more or less in excess of the average ; 

 at some places absolutely without intermission (on the means of 

 the several months), at other places w ith slight and comparatively 

 insignificant interruptions. He also pointed out that this con- 

 dition was not restricted to India, but appeared to have prevailed 

 also in the distant regions of New South Wale, and Victoria, 

 w-here, however, the oscillations were greater and its continuity 

 more interrupted. 



In point of fact this condition of excessive pressure lasted not 

 less than two years in the Indian region, having set in between 

 May and August, 1876, and continued to between May and 

 August, 1S78, after which for many months the pressure was as 

 persistently and strikingly below the average as it had exceeded it 

 during the period in question. It included two years of serious 

 failure of the rains, first in the Peninsular and afterward i iu the 

 Gangetic provinces. Further examination has shown that the 

 condition of excessive pressure prevailed over not only the Indo- 

 Malayan region and Eastern Au.tralia, but also the greater part 

 if not the whole of Asia, probably the whole of Au>tralia and 

 the South Indian Ocean (at least as far as the Mauritius), but iu 

 the extra-tropical regions of both hemispheres it was subject to 

 considerable variations, which were but faintly reproduced in 

 the tropic-. As the result of an inquiry into the characteristic 

 features of this widely extended atmospheric condition, pursued 

 back into past years, I have been led to some preliminary con 

 elusions which seem to me of much interest, not only in them- 

 selves but also as opening up a field of research which may be 

 profitably extended to other quarters of the globe. It may be 

 stated at the outset that as regards the Indo-Malayan region, and 

 perhaps also Ssuth- Eastern Asia generally, the excessive pressure 

 of 1876-78 was in part the maximum phase of a cyclical oscilla- 

 tion ; but that as regards Northern Asia, and probably also 

 Australia, it was anomalous and apparently non-periodic, and 

 even in the Indo-Malayan region, it was probably to a consider- 

 able extent of this character also. 



With respect to the cyclical oscillation, which appears to 



