Avaust 4, 1899.] 
utensils, implements or ornaments, and no 
weapons. The ethnographical collection is 
consequently small. The plant specimens have 
been handed to a well-known student of the 
flora of Socotra, Professor I. Bailey Balfour, of 
Edinburgh University, who describes them as of 
high scientific interest and of great commercial 
value. The cultivation of some of them is being 
undertaken in the Royal Botanic Garden at 
Edinburgh. The report concludes by con- 
gratulating Liverpool on being the first provin- 
cial corporation to further the advancement 
and increase of knowledge by actively sharing 
in the investigation of unknown regions. 
THE Auk reports the return of Mr. George K. 
Cherrie from his expedition to Venezuela, 
where he spent twenty-one months collecting 
for the Tring Museum. His field was the Val- 
ley of the Orinoco, from Ciudad Bolivar to the 
Ventuari River, above the falls and beyond San 
Fernando de Atabapo. He devoted his time 
almost exclusively to birds, but collected some 
insects and small mammals. Many nests and 
sets of eggs were forwarded with the birds. He 
reports that collecting between Ciudad Bolivar 
and the first falls of the Orinoco was rather dis- 
appointing and monotonous; while individuals 
were abundant the species were surprisingly few. 
Above the falls the fauna changed rapidly; the 
number of species increased, and with every 
move up the river new forms appeared. Fly- 
catchers, Wood-hewers and Ant-thrushes were 
the dominant forms, while there was a striking 
scarcity of Humming-birds. Mr. Cherrie’e work 
was cut short by serious illness, which com- 
pelled his withdrawal from the country with 
his work only begun. 
In reply to arecent letter from the Liverpool 
School of Tropical Diseases in regard to the 
prospective research expedition to West Africa 
the Colonial Office write, according to the 
London Times, that ‘‘Mr. Chamberlain had 
learned with great satisfaction that the expedi- 
tion of the Liverpool School is being sent, and 
appreciates the energy and public spirit shown 
by the Committee of the School in the matter. 
The authorities at Sierra Leone will be instruct- 
ed to give every facility to the work of the ex- 
pedition.’? The Colonial Office have also sent 
SCIENCE. 
159 
for the use of the School valuable medical and 
sanitary reports of various tropical colonies, 
and the India Office have sent their medical 
publications. The British Museum directors 
have been invited to send with the expedition 
their dipterologist, Mr. E. E. Austen, offering 
to pay his expenses. The expedition is ex- 
pected to throw an important light on the 
theory held by Major Ross and others as to the 
propagation of malaria by mosquitoes. The ex- 
pedition was to start on July 29th and proceed 
direct to Sierra Leone, and will set to work at 
once ina district which then happens to be pecu- 
liarly unhealthy. It is intended afterwards to 
make investigations at Accra. The Belgian 
government have sent an officially-appointed 
delegate, Dr. S. Van Neck, to visit the Liver- 
pool School of Tropical Diseases and accompany 
the expedition. 
Natural Science states that the Indian Marine 
Service steamer, the Jnvestigator, has recently 
closed a season of surveying, with important 
results both for navigation and zoology. The 
Investigator, starting from the Moulmein River, 
in Burma, last January, steadily surveyed— 
and her surgeon-naturalist, Captain Anderson, 
trawled—across the bay to the northern end of 
the great Andaman, and fixed the position of 
the island for the first time. Thence the longi- 
tudinal position of Port Blair, the capital of the 
penal settlement of the government of India, 
was fixed by running a meridian distance to 
Double Island, off Burma. When at work in 
the Middle Straits, between the two largest 
islands, the ship’s staff had the assistance of 
forty tamed Adamanese pigmies against theiras 
yet savage countrymen, who of late have killed 
several of the Indian convicts near Port Blair 
with poisoned arrows. The fifteen islands in 
the three groups of the Cocos, four Andamans 
and nine Nicobars, will henceforth be a help 
instead of a danger to the busy mercantile ma- 
rine plying between Calcutta, Madras, Burma 
and the Straits Settlements. The deep sea 
trawl went down in some cases from 480 to 
800 fathoms, from which Dr. Anderson brought 
up not a few valuable additions to his collec- 
tions. 
THE Seine below Paris is now free from sew- 
