674 General Notes: | August, 
general unhealthiness experienced there having practically dis- 
appeared; since 1857 the rainfall has diminished one-half and the 
island is now an ordinarily healthy one. 
Botanical and conchological collections are treated of sepa- 
rately in an appendix. Mr. Edgar A. Smith, of the British Mu- 
seum, states that the shells from Tanganyika indicate that “the 
lake was formerly an inland sea, whose waters have gradually 
freshened, many of the species having all the appearance of modi- 
fied marine forms. Nyassa has apparently no connection with 
the formation of this lake, as it presents a quite distinct concho- 
logical fauna.” 
Of the geology of East Central Africa, Mr. Thomson says, that 
the coast tertiary deposits “are succeeded near the base of the 
inner plateau by sandstones and carboniferous rocks striking 
north and south, never rising over 1000 feet, and suggesting a 
continental outline unaltered from an anterior period. An im- 
mense series of greatly more ancient metamorphic rocks com- 
poses the escarpment of the plateau, after which a granitic district 
(sometimes decomposed and forming thick accumulations of clay) 
is reached, showing evidences of volcanic eruptions, which ex- 
tended from the Cape to Abyssinia parallel to and near the coast. 
The upper plateau is also metamorphic, clay-slates occurring near 
Nyassa, round which is an extraordinary agglomeration of vol- 
canic rocks, probably resulting from one slowly acting crater. 
No sufficient material is given for any broad sketch of the coun- 
try between Nyassa and Tanganyika. The latter lake is set as'It 
were in a socket of sandstone, which ends abruptly with the de- 
scent from the plateau, being succeeded by a great mass of fel- 
spathic rock forced through the crust of the earth previous to the 
formation of the present lake, and subsequently fractured paid 
€ 0 
The Algerian missionaries in Urundi, near the northern end of 
Lake Tanganyika, have founded a station on the west coast of the 
lake at Mulonewa in the Masansi country, on the shores of the 
large gulf which Stanley named after Capt. Burton. The coun- 
try is covered with fine trees. A range of hills separates it im 
the rear from the Wabembe, who are said to be cannibals. di 
Pére Livinhac, the head of the Algerian Missionary Exped 
tion Uganda, has given some account of the rulers of that agin 
Under the Kabaka, or absolute monarch, are the chiefs of the grea’ 
families, called Mohamis, of whom three members visited England - 
