GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 165 



Mr N. Hansen and Mr Hugh Evans were chosen as zoologists, and Dr H. 

 Kloevstad as medical officer. With them went two natives of Finland to look 

 after ninety dogs. 



Another effort to discover some clue to the fate of Andree will be made this 

 smnmer. The Swedish-Russian Expedition, which will leave about June 1 for 

 Spitzbergeu to relieve the party that is at present engaged in the work of measur- 

 ing an arc of the meridian in that latitude, plans to make a detour to King 

 Charles Land and carefully search the entire neighborhood. It will be remem- 

 bered that in September of last year a buoy was picked up on the north coast 

 of King Charles Land, at 80° north latitude and 25° east longitude, marked 

 ''Andree's Polar Expedition." When taken to Stockholm and opened, it proved 

 to be what Andree had called " the North Pole Buoy," and in which he was to 

 place a message when he passed the North Pole. However, a microscopical ex- 

 amination of the interior could discover no message. As the buoy could not 

 have drifted to King Charles Land from the neighborhood of the Pole, the only 

 conclusion possible is that it was a part of the wreckage of the expedition, and 

 that possibly more wreckage may be found near by. 



GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 



Contemporary History oftJie World. By Edwin A. Grosvenor, Professor of Euro- 

 pean History in Amherst College. Pp. ix + 173, with colored maps. New 

 York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 1899." |L00. 

 In the production of this unpretentious duodecimo volume of less than 200 

 pages the accomplished Professor of European History at Amherst has placed 

 the American people under an obligation that probably neither he nor they as 

 yet adequately appreciate. Of all enlightened nations we have hitherto been 

 the most self-centered. Engi-ossed in the development of the material resources 

 of our own country, in the building of innumerable cities, the creation of vast 

 industrial enterprises, the binding together of the several parts of our fai" ex- 

 tending domain by the greatest system of railways in the world — the equivalent 

 of a ten-track road around the globe at the equator — and in the practical apiili- 

 cation of science to the affairs of everyday life to an extent unknown in any 

 other country, we have had neither time nor inclination to give more than a 

 passing thought to the affairs of other nations. We have been to a large extent 

 ignorant of tlieir political and social systems, notwithstanding our composite 

 character as a people, and although an enterprising newspaper press has vividly 

 pictured to us from time to time the great events that have been occurring on the 

 world's stage, even the chief actors have soon been forgotten or have become 

 to us mere names, less familiar in some cases than the more remote historic 

 personages immortali/.ed by Scott or Bulweror Dumas, and possessing even less 

 individuality than Adam P>e<le or Colonel Sellers or David Ilarum. How many 

 graduates of our high schools, or even of some of our state universities, know 

 anything aljout Stein or Cavour; how many could tell us who covered himself 

 with glory l>y his heroic defense of Kars in 1855, or who was grouncl between 



