608 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 95. 



ited two forms of camera for photograpliic 

 surveying, and explained the principles of 

 the process, expressing his belief that pho- 

 tography was destined to play a very large 

 part in future surveys, especially for rapidly 

 constructing small scale maps of large 

 areas. Mr. H. IST. Dickson spoke on his 

 work now in progress on the oceanography 

 of the North Atlantic ; and Dr. H. E,. Mill 

 brought forward the scheme for the geo- 

 graphical description of the British Isles 

 which has already been noticed in Science. 

 He stated that the E,oyal Geographical So- 

 ciety had authorized the compilation of a 

 descriptive memoir of a specimen sheet. 



On Friday the proceedings commenced 

 by a paper on old tapestry maps of some 

 English counties contributed by the Eev. 

 W. K. E. Bedford. These maps were 

 woven about the end of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury and present many interesting features. 

 Dr. Tempest Anderson described the Altels 

 avalanche of September, 1895, showing a 

 series of slides. Lieutenant Vaadeleur 

 gave a careful and valuable description of 

 the remoter parts of Uganda and the country 

 bordering the Upper Mle, where he has re- 

 cently traveled extensively in the course of 

 his military duties. Dr. F. P. Gulliver, of 

 Harvard, was welcomed as a disciple of the 

 American school of physical geography, 

 and by the aid of a series of lantern- dia- 

 grams he gave an interesting account of the 

 coast forms of Dungeness and Eomney 

 marsh with deductions as to their origin. 

 In the afternoon Mr. A. Montefiore Brice, 

 Secretary of the Jackson- Harmsworth ex- 

 pedition, gave a full account of the work 

 carried out by Mr. Jackson in Franz Josef 

 Land, which he is determined to thoroughly 

 survey and where he is now spending his 

 third consecutive winter. Slides were 

 shown of the scenery of Franz Josef 

 Land, and of Dr. JSTansen and his com- 

 panion Johansen while the guests of Mr. 

 Jackson. 



Mr. Brice announced that Mr. Harms- 

 worth would probably send out two ships 

 next year to attempt to push northward 

 into the sea beyond Franz Josef Land. 

 M. G. F. Scott Elliot discoursed on the in- 

 fluence of climate and vegetation on African 

 civilization, endeavoring to classify and 

 characterize the tribes according to their 

 environment. Mr. Vaughan Cornish com- 

 pleted the day's work by an original memoir 

 of great merit on the character and origin 

 of sand-dunes. He showed the parts played 

 respectively by the wind drifting sand and 

 driving it in showers, by the eddy in the 

 lee of the dune in gouging out the leeward 

 face, and by gravity in reducing to the 

 angle of repose any steeper slopes tempo- 

 rarily produced by wind. He also recog- 

 nizes negative dunes, hollowed out in sand, 

 which rests on a hard floor, and he draws 

 attention to the homology between sand- 

 dunes formed in the air and sand-banks 

 formed in the water. 



On Saturday Mr. A. J. Herbertson showed 

 some monthly rainfall maps of the world, 

 which he is compiling for Bartholomew's 

 great English physical atlas based on 

 Berghaus. The Eeport of the Committee 

 on African Climatology was read, and Sir 

 James Grant gave a discourse on Canada 

 with special reference to the discoveries of 

 gold in the Dominion. 



On Monday several papers of special in- 

 terest were read. Mr. W. A. L. Fletcher be- 

 gan with a description of the great journey 

 across Tibet from north to south, on which 

 he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. St. George 

 Littledale to the neighborhood of Lhasa. 

 Mr. F. W. Howell and Dr. K. Grossman 

 gave papers on the scenery of the less 

 known parts of Iceland, very finely, illus- 

 trated by slides of glacial and volcanic 

 land- forms. Mr. G. G. Chisholm read a 

 philosophic paper on the relativity of geo- 

 graphical advantages, in which he showed 

 that at different periods of history, the con- 



