May 18, 1SS3.] 



SCIENCE. 



431 



sail some time during May, and will attempt a journey 

 easiwaixl over the ice from Auleitsivik fiord, in lat. 

 68° 30', near Egedesmlnde. Later an attempt "may 

 be made to penetrate northward along the south-east- 

 ern coast. N"o new information has been obtained 



from the remainder of the Jeannette survivors, re- 

 cently examined by the Naval board. In a recent 



lecture, Mr. E. H. Hall stated that the population of 

 Newfoundland and Labrador amounts to 190,000, 

 about o]ie-quarter of whom subsist by the fisheries, 

 which are valued at four and a half millions of dol- 

 lars annually. The copper-mines produce about 45,- 

 000 tons of metal annually. A hurricane in Brit- 

 ish Columbia recently destroyed four vessels in Vic- 

 toria harboi-, and was attended with some loss of life. 



The fur-seal fishery off Cape Flattery has been 



very productive this season, over 20,000 seals having 



been secured. The Newfoundland hair-seal fish- 



•ery has also been remarkably successful, more than 

 200,000 hooded and harp seal Ijeins reported taken. 

 On the other hand, the Dundee fleet, in the same 

 waters, is said to have made a poor catch. En- 

 sign Stoney, U.S.N., will sail early in May in the 

 revenue-cutter Corwin to distribute the presents from 

 the government to the Chukchis, of St. Lawrence 

 Bay, Bering Strait, who succored the crew of the 

 U.S. S. Rodgers, which was burned in that bay while 



searching for the Jeannette party. ^The growing 



scarcity of salmon for canning, in the Columbia River 

 and southward, lias led those interested to push into 

 the undepleted waters northward. Several new fish- 

 eries have been established on the Skeena River, and 

 others on the Chilkat River, and even in Cook's Inlet, 



nearly to latitude 60° N. Four steam-whalers, 



built on the Pacific coast, will join the Bering Strait 

 fleet this season. They are fitted with all the latest 

 improvements, including iron tanks for oil and blub- 

 ber, and are appropriately named the Orca, Bowhead, 



Narwhal, and Balaena. It has been a very open 



season in Alaska, and in the south-eastern jjortion the 



snow was reported nearly gone March 2-5. The 



aboriginal inhabitants of middle and northern Sibe- 

 ria, especially the Ostiaks and Samoyeds, are ap- 

 parently either at a standstill, or even decreasing 

 in numbers. According to recent investigations of 

 Tadrintseff, their situation is precarious; and that 

 they should gradually die out, as seems inevitable, is 

 the more unfortunate, since many of them possess 



much intelligence and numerous good qualities. 



In Petermann's mittlieUant/en for April, Dr. Rink 

 describes the investigations of the Danes in Green- 

 land during recent years, in mineralogy, geology, 

 geography, botany, and archeology, and gives a geo- 

 logical map of the west coast between Disco and 

 Proven. — w. H. D. [885 



(South America.) 

 Chilian province Arauco. — A physical sketch 

 of this province, by J. Sieveking, divides it into the 

 littoral slope, the coast or Nahuelbuta range, the cen- 

 tral plain, and the great Cordillera. The Nahuelbuta 

 range extends north-north-west to south-south-east, 

 and reaches an elevation of .5,000 feet. Its rocks are 

 granite and crystalline schists, broken by basalt erup- 

 tions, and furnish gold to the streams. The aurifer- 

 ous gravels gave a rich yield to the early Spaniards, 

 who forced the Indians to work them; but the latter 

 rebelled, and drove away their would-be masters. In 

 late years gold-washing has been again attemijled 

 with moderate success. Between the mountains and 

 the coast is a hilly country, some twenty miles wide, 

 rising to 1,000 feet elevation. It consists of Jurassic 

 and later conglomerates and sandstones, which en- 

 close valuable coal-beds, three to nine feet thick, with 



a low percentage {two and a half) of ash. In Arauco 

 little mining-work has yet been done: but, in the ad- 

 joining province on the north, the output reaches 

 10,000 tons a month ; and with the rapid increase of 

 steam-navigation along the western coast, of railroads 

 in the interior, and of smelting and saltpetre works 

 in the north, where fuel is scarce, this product must 

 grow rapidly. The author believes the coal to be 

 Jurassic, and not tertiary, as it has been described. 

 All the coast range and littoral slope are heavily 

 wooded, the climate rough and wet, especially in 

 winter; the streams are short and not navigable, 

 and, ou nearing the coast, they cross a low plain of 

 recent elevation. The harbors are open to the north- 

 west, but closed ou the south-west by the extension 

 of sand-bars built up by the heavy waves and strong 

 northward current. The central plain proves well 

 adapted to agriculture and grazing at the few points 

 where it has been settled; but the greater part is still 

 unoccupied, except by the Araucanians, who main- 

 tain possession of a considerable share of good land 

 in the .south. Little is known of the Cordillera (it 

 has hardly been entered), as winter begins early there 

 with heavy snow-storms. The stones brought down 

 by its streams are nearly all porphyritic, and sedi- 

 mentary rocks are quite absent. There are two vol- 

 canoes on the range-, — Antuco, which Poppig found 

 active; and Villarica, near the lake of the same 

 iia.me. — {Peterm.mitth.,lSS3,ol.) w. M. D. [886 



(Afi-ica.) 



Lake Moeris. — Another of the stories of Herod- 

 otus seems to be gaining ground. In 1871 Rousseau- 

 Bey found, by levelling, that the present lake, Birket- 

 el-Kerun, in the Faynm (of. .Schweinfurth, Zeitschr. 

 f. ei-dk. Berlin, xv. 18S0, 1-52, map), is at surface and 

 bottom 41 and 55 met. respectively below the Mediter- 

 ranean, and that its former level was 10 met. above 

 the same datum, giving an original depth of 65 met. 

 and a greatly extended area. Comparing this with 

 the description of the ' Meridis lacus,' given by 

 Herodotus, Mr. F. C. Whitehouse was confirmed in 

 his trust of the old geographer, and, after some pre- 

 liminary excursions, set out from Cairo early in lci82, 

 and succeeded in finding by aneroid measurement a 

 considerable depression south of Birket-el-Kei-un, 

 with its lowest point ISO feet below the Mediter- 

 ranean, separated from the northern basin by a low 

 divide (gisr), that seemed decidedly below the level of 

 the Nile in this latitude. The southern end of this 

 depression was not visited; but, as now mapped, the 

 entire basin, if flooded from the Nile, might approach 

 the area, and reach the depth, given for it by Herod- 

 otus, although his description has generally been 

 discredited, ahmg with his assertion that it is ' mani- 

 festly artificial.' But this, also, Mr. Whitehouse 

 seems to accept, as he speaks of the basin as a ' vic- 

 tory of mind over matter,' and suggests that we 

 should treat the Mississippi as the Egyptians did the 

 Nile. This conclusion, and the severely critical 

 animus shown towards earlier writers, are the less 

 satisfactory parts of the paper, which, in its evidence 

 of work, its review of the cartography of the Fayum, 

 and its quotations concerning Lake Moeris from 

 ancient authors, contains much of interest. — (Bull. 

 ^mer. j/eo(/j-. soc, 1882, 85, map.) w. M. D. [887 



Southern Abyssinia. — P. Soleillet writes from 

 Ankober, Nov. 10, 1882, that he had made good 

 progress, and obtained from King Menelik valuable 

 concessions for the commercial company that he 

 represents. A vast agricultural territory was open 

 to their occupation and cultivation. Olive-foresls 

 were found to be very extensive : their fruit might Ije 



