1879. | Geography and Travels. 721 
D’Abaddie, speaking of the determination of altitudes by the 
species of plants growing at various heights, alluded to by M. 
Woéikoff, said that during his travels in Abyssinia, after having 
made known to several botanists the fact that vegetation was dis- 
tributed with great regularity on the mountains, he was invited. 
by some botanists to verify the height of a mountain that he had 
indicated from native information as lower than a neighboring 
peak. The trees which had been indicated as growing on the 
summits of the two mountains showed that the lower one ought 
to have been the higher. The two mountains were surveyed 
hypsometrically, and the results showed that the botanists were 
right and the natives wrong. 
In the annual address on the progress of geography at the 
anniversary meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, Mr. C. 
. Markham stated that “an important advance towards the solu- 
tion of one of the chief Asiatic geographical problems has been 
made this year, namely, the discovery of another section of the 
unexplored course of the Brahmapootra. One of Col. Walker’s 
indefatigable native explorer’s has traced and surveyed the 
Sanpu, the great river of Thibet, for two hundred miles beyond 
Chetang, the most eastern point to which it had hitherto been 
followed. Here the river turned southwards into the hills and 
between this point and that reached by Capt. Wilcox on the 
Dihong, in his journey from the Assam plain, in 1825, there is a 
comparatively short gap. But in that interval there is a fall of 
8000 feet and upwards, so that the complete discovery of the still 
unknown portion will probably disclose a scene of wonderful sub- 
limity—one of the last and perhaps the grandest of nature’s 
secrets. 
Lieut. WHEELER'S SURVEY WorK IN Orecon, 1878.—Mr. J. 
W. Goad, one of the survey party, sends the following account of 
Lieut. Wheeler’s operations in Oregon during the past year, to 
the Royal Geographical Society : 
“On the road northwards from Reno, in Nevada, along the 
Californian eastern boundary, Pyramid lake, which receives 
One of its objects (approved by Gen. Humphreys) being to make 
a complete reconnaissance of the Cascade mountains and a sur- 
