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A) Geography and Travels. - 465 
subordinates accompanying him. At Kuldja he will be joined by 
the same interpreters as were with him on his last journey, and 
at Zaissan by five cossacks. From here the expedition will start 
with thirty camels and some horses for Hami and Suh-chau, and 
thence proceed to the Kansu mountains. The party will next 
make for Lhassa by the usual route, and by February, 1880, hope 
to reach the Himalayas by way of the Brahmapootra river. 
Returning then to Lhassa he will visit Khotan, Kashgar and 
cross the intervening plateau to Russian Khokand. The journey 
is to occupy two years. He has been most fully equipped for this 
arduous task, the Russian Geographical Society having contribu- 
ted 20,000 roubles. If he can but accomplish a third of his pro- 
gramme, he will have done a great service to geography. 
Friedlander & Son, of Berlin, have recently commenced the 
publication, every two weeks, of a journal, Mature Novitates, 
which contains a fortnightly bibliographical list of current litera- 
ture in all languages in the various departments of science. | 
The Royal Geographical Society has undertaken to organize a 
uniform system of spelling the names of places throughout the 
globe. A commencement has been made with Indian names. 
After these are tabulated and revised the society propose to turn 
their attention to African names. They hope finally to establish 
a universal set of rules applicable to all parts of the world. 
We learn from the Academy that a Norwegian captain named 
Bjerkan spent the winter of 1876-7 at Möller bay, on the west 
side of Novaya Zemlya. His journal, containing observations 
from October 4th to June 11th of the temperature of the air and 
sea, and the direction of the winds, has been published. These 
records show a decided maximum of temperature in January 
4°4 F. above the means of either December or February. This 
peculiarity is also noticeable, says the Academy, in all the exist- 
ing records from Novaya Zemlya and in the Austrian observa- 
tions on Franz Joseph Land, and is therefore not confined to the 
period of Capt. Bjerkan’s stay. This high temperature was 
accompanied by prevalent southerly winds, but the absence of - 
barometrical observations makes it impossible to say whether 
these winds were.due to the passage of cyclones to the northward 
of the station in the month of January. 
A small scientific expedition left Denmark in April of this 
year to explore portions of the coast of Greenland, their object 
being chiefly to examine the fiords between the Danish colonies 
of Holsteinborg and Egedesminde. Excursions are also to be 
made into the unknown regions of the interior, and scientific 
observations of various kinds will be taken. ae 
The Church Missionary Society (London) have published two- 
large wall maps of Africa for the use of lecturers, One exhibits 
the whole continent and the other the equatorial lake district. 
_ A new edition of the Library Map of Africa, scale 1 : 5,977,382, 
