522 General Notes. (May, 
certain that a naturalist would find himself well rewarded for the 
ascent. There are traditions of strange isolated tribes that live 
in this inaccessible region. 
Professor Geo. Davidson has communicated to Science the fol- 
lowing particulars of recent volcanic action in Alaska : 
‘he explosion of October 6, 1883, split perpendicularly in 
twain the mountain of St. Augustin, situated on the island of the 
same name, forty-nine miles west of the settlement on Port 
Graham or English harbor, in Cook’s inlet, Alaska. Vast col- 
umns of smoke were seen to rise from the summit of the moun- 
tain, a column of white vapor rose from the sea near the island, 
and a great earthquake wave, twenty-five to thirty feet high, came 
upon Port Graham, followed by two other waves, estimated at 
eighteen and fifteen feet. Had it not been low water all the peo- 
ple of the settlement would have been lost. The tides rise and 
fall about fourteen feet. Capt. Sands, who was at English harbor, 
states that if there were plenty of water in the line of rupture 
the mountain, it would be possible for a vessel to sail through. 
Capt. Culkie, of the schooner Kodiak, who approached St. 
gustin on Nov. roth, found a new island about a mile persis 
long and seventy-five feet high, that had been’ upheaved in pa 
ten-fathom passage between the island and the mainland. At 
same time two extinct volcanoes on the Alaskan peninsula, rè 
ported to be about west from the active volcano Iliamna ang 
feet high), burst into activity. A party of Aleuts, living on 
island, are supposed to be lost. 
THe Arctic.—Novaya Zemlya.—M. Grinevetsky, who Jour 
neyed across Novaya Zemlya in the spring of 1878, reports 
the southern island consists of three different parts. sepa 
ern part is covered by mountains that are quite pening is 
bounded to the south by the Pakhovaya river ; the mii hills, 
covered, on the west coast, by five or six par lel chami is 
the highest summits of which reach 800 feet, while to : chy 
a wide plateau; and the southern part is a plateau arr il 
450 feet high. There are two varieties of reindeer on Har land, 
one confined to the southern, the other to the nort 
and the latter variety greatly resembles the reindeer O a 
gen. This fact, taken with the feebleness of the cold e ss 
in Barentz sea, and the large amount of mud and Led the idea 
floating ice north-west of Novaya Zemlya, gives age age archi- 
that Spitzbergen is connected with Novaya Zemlya PY 
pelago. ition 
THE ARCHIPELAGO oF Care Horn.— The Prenga irap 
has been actively engaged in surveying the poan t 58° > lat. 
of islands, which extend south of Beagle strait abou ent af 
These islands present the same structure as h pore js aa 
which they are the continuation. Off their western © 
