662 General Notes. [ October, 
extremity of the Victoria Nyanza. A recent number of the 
Church Missionary Intelligencer gives an account by the Rev. C. 
T. Wilson of his voyage across the great lake from Uganda to 
Kagei. South of the Kagera or Kitangule river the low forest- 
covered shore gives place to high downs ending in abrupt preci- 
pices 300 or 400 feet high. North of the Kagera the rocks are 
mostly a hard conglomerate, the matrix being a clay iron ore, in 
which quartzite pebbles were imbedded, but on the south they 
are clay slate with red sandstone, the strata being inclined ina 
westerly direction at an angle of about fifteen degrees. 
The American Board of Foreign Missions having recently 
received a large bequest, is desirous of establishing a mission in 
Africa, but finds nearly every portion of the coast occupied or at 
least prospected! They will probably choose a site in the interior 
where certainly there can be no difficulty in finding an unoccu- 
pied field. 
The King of the Belgians has presented the International 
African Association with four Indian elephants. They have 
arrived safely at Zanzibar from Bombay, and have been landed 
near Dar-es-Salaam. An elephant will convey fifteen ordinary 
porters’ loads of sixty pounds each, so that seven elephants would 
be able to carry as much as one hundred porters. 
Osrruary.—The following appeared in the London Atheneum 
of August 9, 1879: ‘Mr. Keith Johnston is no more. A son o 
the eminent geographer, Alexander Keith Johnston, the deceased 
gave early promise of fulfilling to the utmost the expectations of 
his friends. Carefully trained under the eye of his father and at 
Perthes’s Geographical Institute under Dr. Petermann, he exhib- 
ited equal skill as a compiler of maps and a writer on geographi- 
cal subjects. Amongst his latest works are a volume on ‘Africa, 
recently published by Mr. Stanford, and a ‘ Book of Physical 
a preliminary trip to Usambara gave promise of an exhaustive 
and trustworthy account of his further researches, such as 1s but 
rarely furnished by African ‘pathfinders.’ It was not to be. ` Still 
a young man, not yet thirty, he has joined that band of noble 
‘men who have laid down their lives in the cause of African 
exploration.” 
MICROSCOPY.’ 
American Society oF Microscopists.—This society assembled 
in Buffalo on Tuesday morning, August 19th, and adjourned on 
_ Friday noon, the 22d. About sixty members were in attendance. 
~ 1 This department is edited by Dr. R. H. Warp, Troy, N. Y. 
