502 General Notes. [June, 
“Dr. Heath,” writes Professor Parker in the Kansas City Re- 
view, “alone, unaided, spent two years in patient, determined 
preparation near the scene of the proposed exploration, and then, 
in a frail canoe, with only two Indian servants, with certain death 
before them, as all Bolivia believed, paddled. bravely forth to ex- 
plore a great river and extensive country, where during 350 years, 
a score of costly expeditions have disastrously failed. It is 
thought that the governments of Peru and Bolivia will give offi- 
cial recognition of his daring and successful achievement. His 
work will develop and change the commerce of many hundred 
miles of mountain and plain. Rubber and bark will now descend 
the Beni instead of going six or seven hundred miles around.’ 
FRanz-Joser LAND REVISITED. 11.—We extract from a paper 
prepared and read before the Royal Geographical Society, by Mr. 
C. R. Markham, the following additional information concerning 
the geology of the land visited by Mr. Leigh Smith.) 
“The lowest rocks belong to the Oxford clay, and are repre- 
sented, in the collection brought home in the Eira, by two belem- 
nites. Above the Oxford clay the rock is of the cretaceous 
period, to which the fossil coniferous wood belongs, including one 
very perfect cone. There: are also slabs with impressions of 
plants. Over all there has been an overflow of basalt and 
lava forming a cap, as on the Island of Disco. The col- 
lection of fossils brought home by Captain Markham from No- 
vaya Zemlya, proved the existence of carboniferous rocks there, 
which dip under the more recent formations of Franz-Josef Land. 
Exactly the same carboniferous fossils were found by Sir George 
Nares Expedition at Cape Joseph Henry ; and these discoveries 
point to the probable existence of a carboniferous series 0 rocks 
in the unknown region nearer the Pole, on which the cretaceous 
rocks of Franz-Josef Land are resting. The complete geological 
examination of the unknown region is one out of many important 
results to be derived from further Polar discovery.” 
smithi, after its discoverer. “These sea spiders are found in a 
British seas of very small size. The large ones have been 60” 
lected in the Kara Sea; but this new genus is peculiar to the S¢ 
of Franz-Josef Land.” mes 
n our narrative? of Mr. Smith’s voyage, we took from My 
London Zimes a notice of a “ can” being seen on Wilczek Islan¢, 
? Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, March, 1881. 
? NATURALIST, March, 1881, p. 254. 
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