84 Address. [Feb. 



On this latter question I may refer to an interesting report by Col. 

 Tanner, which appears in the last Annual Report of the Survey of India 

 Department, and may mention that a native explorer has been sent to 

 make further observations about the lower course of the Dihong. 



The many interesting problems connected with the sources of the 

 five large rivers which, all flowing from the south-east corner of Tibet 

 through a tract of not more than 400 miles in width, extend southwards 

 and eastwards, and water an enormous tract extending almost from 

 Calcutta to Shanghai, must await for their definite solution the further 

 opening out of the hitherto sealed regions on our new Upper-Burma 

 Frontier; but now that the question of new trade-routes between 

 Burma, Assam and China is attracting the earnest attention of the 

 Government in this country, we may hope in the interests of geography 

 that it will not long be deferred. The geographical aspects of the 

 question cannot be in better hands than they are with our late chief, 

 General Walker, and his present successor 1 , Col. Thuillier. 



Tibet. — Tibet still remains impenetrable as ever to Europeans. A 

 further attempt was to have been made last year by a Russian expedi- 

 tion, under command of the veteran traveller and explorer Prjewalski, to 

 reach Lhassa, which had long been the dream of his life, but at the very 

 outset of the journey he died, on the way from Tashkend to Vernyi, 

 aged only 50. To the Russian nation and the still greater realm of 

 science, the loss of a servant so devoted and untiring as Prjewalski, 

 must be irreparable, but it is gratifying to know that his work is to be 

 continued, and we may hope that sooner or later the dreary wastes of 

 Northern Tibet, which have so long remained closed to all European 

 explorers, will be opened out to science. 



In the course of his four journeys to Central Asia Prjewalski 

 traversed nearly the whole of Eastern Turkestan, the desert of Gobi and 

 the country in the neighbourhood of the Tang-tse Kiang and the Hoang 

 Ho, penetrating as far eastwards as Pekin, He re-discovered the Lake of 

 Lob Nor, which no European had visited since Marco Polo. During the 

 course of these journeys he made most extensive zoological and botanical 

 collections which it will take many years to work out. Among his most 

 notable ' finds ' were the wild camel and the wild horse. The accounts 

 of his four journeys have all been published and some of them translated 

 into many European languages. The scientific results are still being 

 worked out. 



The following extract from a letter lately received by Dr. Prain from 

 Mr. Maximowicz, the well-known Russian botanist, may be of interest. 

 " He (Prjewalski) was a powerful man, and during the intervals between 

 his travels devoted to book- writing (he never started for a ne w voyage 



