1 68 General Notes. [February, 



The Athenaum states that "Captain J. W. Fisher, of the 

 American whaler Legal Tender , reached San Francisco at the end 

 of September from Point Barrow, and he reports that in August 

 the ice barrier was over twenty miles north of the point, and was 

 every day moving further northward. The steam whaler Bel- 

 videre had gone much further to the east than the rest of the 

 whaling fleet in an endeavour to reach the Mackenzie River, about 

 450 miles east of Point Barrow. On her outward voyage the 

 Legal Tender had on board Drs. Arthur and Aurel Krause, who 

 had been sent out by the Bremen Geographical Society to under- 

 take a journey in the coast districts and islands of Behring Strait 

 and Sea, partly for the purpose of investigating the ethnology 

 and marine zoology of Alaska. Capf. Fisher landed them at St. 

 Lawrence Bay where they were to spend a fortnight, and then 

 proceed to East Cape and the Diomede Islands. On returning to 

 St. Lawrence Bay they proposed to work their way down the 

 Siberian coast to Plover Bay. Capt. Fisher states that Mr. W. 

 H. Dall, of the U. S. Coast Survey, has made a great mistake in 

 his reports respecting the current in Bering Strait. During the 

 whole summer a strong current sets northward through the strait 

 and it is only in September or October that northerly winds affect 

 it. Mr. Dall's observations, he says, extended only over a few 

 days and were made in an eddy current under the lee of the 

 Diomede Islands. Capt. Fisher further reports that off Point 

 Barrow a current of three or four knots an hour sets regularly 

 along the land to the north-east, but it does not extend for fifty 

 miles off the shore." 



Geographical Notes. — A committee of the Royal Society con- 

 sisting of Sir George Airy, Professor J. Adams and Professor 

 Stokes, appointed to consider what " might yet be required in 

 order to render the pendulum operations, which have been carried 

 out in connection with the great trigonometrical survey of India, 

 reasonably complete as an important contribution towards the 

 determination of gravity all over the earth," have reported that it 

 is desirable that "the Indian group of stations, which have already 

 been connected with Kew, should be differentially connected with 

 at least one chain of stations which are so connected with one 

 another, and which have been employed in the determination of the 

 figure of the earth." They refer to the suggestion made by 

 Professor Peirce of the U. S. Coast Survey, that the same two 

 pendulums that were swung in India should be used first at Kew 

 and then at Washington. They say — "As Washington is, or 

 shortly will be, connected differentially with a large chain of 

 stations widely distributed in America and elsewhere, we think 

 that the value of the Indian series would be decidedly increased 

 by being connected with one of the American stations, such as 



Washington." It appears that as early as the sixteenth century 



plans had been formed by the Spanish for canals in Central 



