372 GEOGRAPHIC MISCELLANEA 



senate. The Finnish railway will be connected with the Russian system 

 by bridging the Neva. 



The projected ship canal from Georgian bay to Montreal would mean 

 a saving of 725 miles in the transportation of grain from Chicago to Liver- 

 pool. The canal would run from Georgian bay eastward through the 

 French river to Lake Nipissing, thence through a small tributary to the 

 Ottawa river, and on to Ottawa and the St Lawrence. All but 29 miles 

 is open river and lake w T aters. 



The schooner Julia E. Whalen has returned to San Francisco from a 

 cruise to the Galapagos islands, west of Ecuador. The vessel carried the 

 scientific expedition sent out last autumn by Leland Stanford University, 

 under the patronage of Timothy Hopkins, of San Francisco. It is re- 

 ported that a splendid collection of specimens of live land tortoises, birds, ■ 

 fish, etc., has been brought back. 



Twenty six-wheel connected side-tank locomotives were built recently 

 at the Richmond Locomotive and Machine Works for the Swedish state 

 railways for use north of the Arctic circle. While they have a foreign 

 appearance, they are built strictly in accordance with American practice, 

 with a few exceptions, the most notable of which are the copper fire-box 

 and copper hollow water-space stays. 



A party from the IT. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey is now engaged in 

 gathering information on Long Island sound for a new supplement that 

 is soon to be issued of the Coast Pilot Chart. Four topographic and three 

 hydrographic parties are also at work near the head of the Chesapeake 

 bay, and, at the request of the Navy Department, special examinations 

 are being made near Governors Island, New York harbor, and at Pollock 

 Rip, off Cape Cod. 



Andree and His Balloon, by H. Lachambre and A. Machuron, who ac- 

 companied the expedition to Spitzbergen, recently published by Archi- 

 bald Constable, Westminster, England (crown octavo, $1.50), describes 

 the inception and preparation of Andree's hazardous enterprise. The 

 book also contains a brief biography of Andree, about whom compara- 

 tively little is known in this country, and is beautifully illustrated by 40 

 full-page cuts from photographs taken by the authors. 



Ten maps recently issued for gratuitous distribution by the U. S Geo- 

 logical Survey embody the results of the explorations and surveys made 

 by the parties sent to Alaska in 1898 by the War Department and by the 

 Survey. The maps are a convenient compilation of recent Alaskan sur- 

 veys, and also a summary of our present geographic knowledge of the 

 country: Application for them can be made either to Senators or Rep- 

 resentatives or to the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



During the past ten years a fuller recognition of the place of the great 

 circle route in the problem of accelerating ocean transit has stimulated 

 an advance to methods by which great circle courses can be taken from 

 the Solar Azimuth Tables or measured from the chart compass with very 

 great facility. These new developments have been recently incorporated 

 in a second edition of The Development of Great Circle Sailing by G. W. 

 Littlehales, issued from the U. S. Hydrographic Office as Bulletin No. 90. 



