NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 327 



etc., of the northern lights. Similar researches will be conducted by the 

 Swede-Russian expedition in Spitzbergen and northern Norway. 



The Diana, under the command of Mr H. L. Bridgeman, of the Stand. 

 ard Union and Secretary of the Peary Arctic Club, sailed from Sidney 

 Jul}- 20 on the second of the series of annual reinforcements for Lieuten- 

 ant Peary. As announced in the July number of The National Geo- 

 graphic Magazine, the vessel carries stores of provisions for her own 

 party, for Peary's, and for the Windward' s, enough for 50 men for one }'ear. 



In an article on the Erie and Welland Canals, Bradstreet's of July 15 

 says that the phenomenal lowering of railway transportation rates in 

 recent years has tended toward the crippling of all but the most favorably 

 situated of the interior water routes, and adds that it is questionable 

 whether the purely artificial waterways can be so improved as to get back 

 a fair share of the immense traffic which formerly sought these channels 

 on the way to market. 



Dr F. A. Cook, the surgeon and anthropologist of the Belgica, in a 

 paper appearing in the New York Herald (July 2, 1899), gives the following 

 summary of the lesults of the Belgian expedition: "The discovery of a 

 new strait nearly as large as the Straits of Magellan ; the discovery of about 

 five hundred miles of new coast ; the discovery of a submarine plateau 

 west of Graham Land ; a complete series of meteorological and magnetic 

 observations throughout one year." The strait, to be called Belgica strait, 

 is said to begin about five hundred miles southwest of Cape Horn, on the 

 sixty-fourth degree of south latitude, and between the sixty-first and 

 sixty-second degrees of west longitude. Its general direction is south- 

 westerly, with an average width of twenty-five miles and a length of two 

 hundred miles. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 

 SOCIETY, SESSION i898-'99 



Special Meeting, February S, 1899. — President Bell in the ch.air. Prof. 

 Alfred P. Dennis gave an illustrated lecture on Life on a Yukon Trail. 



Regular Meeting, February 10, 1899. — President Bell in the chair. Major 

 A. Falkner von Sonnenberg, of the German Imperial Army, gave an 

 illustrated lecture on Manila and the Philippines. 



Special Meeting, February 17, 1899.— President Bell in the chair. Prof. 

 John L. Ewell, of Howard University, gave an illustrated lecture on Ger- 

 many in the Reformation Period, with its Geographic Relations. 



Lenten Course, February 21, 1899.— President Bell in the chair. Hon. 

 David J. Hill. Assistant Secretary of State, gave an illustrated lecture on 

 The Original Thirteen States. 



Regular Meeting, February 24, 1899.— President Bell in the chair. Prof. 

 U.S. Pritchett, Superintendent of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 

 gave an illustrated lecture on The Results of Recent Alaskan Surveys. 



