750 Meeting of the British Association. [Oct., 



and the other, the Comoros. The Seychelles, according to the 

 author, are the summits of a group of granitic mountains sur- 

 rounded by banks of coral, and consist of thirty islands, varying in 

 size from a length of seventeen miles to islets containing only a few 

 acres. The Comoros are larger islands, and four in number, one of 

 which, Mayotte, is under French influence, they having a naval 

 station on the islet Zaondzi, close to its shores. The Seychelles 

 when discovered were destitute of inhabitants, but the Comoros were 

 found to be peopled by an aboriginal race, of which scarcely any 

 record remains, the islands having been for some centuries dominated 

 by immigrant Arabs. Comoro proper, the largest and northernmost 

 island of the group, is the least known, although the most remarkable 

 in its physical features. Active volcanoes, 8,000 feet high, rise from 

 its surface and pour forth streams of lava, which flood their flanks 

 and rear or obliterate islands in the surrounding ocean. When the 

 English consul, Mr. Sunley, recently visited the island, after an 

 absence of four years, he found a lava reef, three quarters of a mile 

 in length, jutting out near his old landing-place and perplexing his 

 topography. 



There was a short paper by Mr. Eobert Swinhoe, entitled 

 " Additional Notes on Formosa," and supplementary to a more 

 elaborate paper, which he read at the Newcastle Meeting in 1863. 



On Australia there was only one short paper, a sketch of the 

 journey recently (in 1864) performed by Mr. Duncan Mclntyre across 

 the continent, from the Darling river to the Gulf of Carpentaria. 

 This journey has excited great interest in Australia, owing to the 

 discovery, by Mr. Mclntyre, near the banks of the Flinders river, of 

 supposed traces of Leichhardt. The traces consist of two trees 

 marked with the letter L, and, from the age of the incision, believed 

 to indicate a Leichhardtian camp; and of two old horses with half- 

 effaced brands upon them, found straying in a region where no 

 horses were ever left by any subsequent explorer. The geographical 

 results of the journey were the discovery of a fine stretch of pastoral 

 country, — smooth, undulating downs, — stretching from the stony desert 

 of Sturt to the northern coast range, and of four new rivers north- 

 west of Cooper's Creek. The journey from Cooper's Creek to the 

 sea occupied only thirty-four days, a little more than half the time 

 taken by either Burke or McKinlay. Mr. Mclntyre's object was the 

 discovery of a good route for stock to Northern Australia and the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria, in which he appears to have succeeded. He 

 found that no impediment exists to the construction of a carriage 

 road or railway from the Darling river to the Gulf. 



The question of North Polar Exploration was discussed in two 

 papers having that title, one by Mr. C. E. Markham, and the other 

 by Admiral Ommanney. Mr. Markham marshalled with great force 

 the various arguments in favour of the Smith Sound plan, as proposed 

 last winter by Captain Sherard Osborn, and already made known to 

 the public. He quoted Sir Leopold McClintock as an advocate of 

 this route, as the best for attaining the ends of a North Polar expedi- 



