8 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
only at appointed stations, which occur every 5 or 6 miles, 
-and those going one way must make fast to the bank. The speed 
also has to be restricted to about 5 miles an hour. Now in-a 
second canal of the same size the speed would still have to be kept 
low, and the grounding of a large vessel would block up the 
channel, as at present. 
On returning through the canal in April last year the appearance 
of traffic had greatly diminished. There were only two or three 
steamers at Port Said, and as many at Suez; and during our 
passage of forty-eight hours from one place to the other we met 
about two dozen going northwards. The charges on steamers are 
very heavy, amounting in our case to about £1 ,200, and the profits 
are said to be enormous. 
To resume the homeward journey. We were not allowed to 
land in Egypt, through fear of having cholera brought from India, 
and such of us as wished to proceed to Italy had to go on to 
Malta. From Malta I crossed to Sicily, and spent a few days on 
the east and north coasts of that picturesque island. A curious 
optical appearance on Mount Etna may be worth mentioning. We 
watched the sunset one evening from the ruins of a Greek theatre 
at Taormina, a village romantically perched on a steep and rocky 
mountain side, about 600 feet above the sea, and looking down 
upon the site of Naxos, the earliest Greek colony in Sicily. After 
the sun had disappeared behind the snowy crest of Etna, a speck 
of “bright silvery light, like a large star, remained for a few 
minutes at the point where the sun had vanished. The guardian 
of the ruins explained to us that this was not an unusual appear- 
ance. It was probably connected with reflections from fields of ice 
on the distant side of Etna; but, whatever the cause, it was 
certainly a striking and beautiful phenomenon. 
From Palermo we crossed to Naples. There I visited the Zoo- 
logical Station, superintended by Dr. Dohrn. It is admirably 
got up, and puts through a large amount of biological work, At 
the time of my visit there were seven naturalists and thirty-five 
servants on the paid staff A steam launch and boats were kept 
