1880. | Geography and Travels. 909 
Messrs. Scott and Osborne, has made important additions to our 
knowledge of the Eocene Vertebrata —E. D. Co ope. 
GEOLOGICAL News.—Mr. Hébert has recently published in the 
gain Rendus an account of the geology of the British Chan- 
1. e last number of the Palzontographica contains two 
roni memoirs: Roëmer on a Carbonaceous chalk formation 
of the West Coast of Sumatra; and Branco on the development 
. of the extinct Cephalopoda. M. Filhol having finished his work 
on the extinct Vertebrata of San Gerand le Puy, is about to pub- 
lish one on those discovered at Ronzon. The Powell Survey 
has just published Capt. Dutton’s report on the Central Plateaus 
of the Colorado drainage. 
GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVELS. 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL SECTION OF THE BRITISH 
AssociaTion.—The British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, held its fiftieth meeting at Swansea from the 25th of Au- 
gust to the Ist of September. The President of the Geographical 
Section, Lieutenant General Sir J. H: Lefroy, F. R. S., in his 
opening address, en at length on the progress of discovery on 
our Own contin 
In other tee geography was the pioneer of civilization and 
commerce. Here for the first time she had been outstripped, for 
the telegraph and the railway had tracked the forest or prairie, 
and traversed the mountains by paths before unknown to her. 
Within living memory no traveler known to fame had crossed 
the American continent from East to West except Andrew Mac- 
kenzie in 1793. No traveler had reached the American Polar sea 
by land except the same illustrious explorer and Samuel Hearne. 
The British Admiralty had not long before instructed Captain 
Vancouver to search on the coast of the Pacific for some near 
Ne ce with a river flowing into or out of the Lake of the 
ood 
s 
In proceeding to notice the extensive explorations and surveys 
undertaken by the Government of the United States and of 
Canada, he alluded to the great aid afforded the former by the 
physical features of the region of their trigonometrical survey 
mame sharp rocky peaks, bare of vegetation, rise to altitudes of 
0,000 to 12,000 feet at convenient distances, in an atmosphere of 
ier tad purity; whilst in the British territory a vast region, 
wholly wanting in conspicuous points, is to be laid out in town- 
ships of uniform area. The law required that the eastern and 
western boundaries of every township be true astronomical merid- 
ians, and that the sphericity of the earth’s figure be duly allowed 
for, so that the northern boundary must be less in measurement 
than the southern. All lines are required to be gone over twice 
1 Edited by ELLIS H. YARNALL, Philadelphia. 
