On the Crystalline Form of the Globe. 165 



forming large islands inhabited each by a different tribe : that 

 700 or 800 miles from the ocean, the western branch of the 

 Zambesi receives the Chobe, which is also a large river, the 

 Ohio to this African Mississippi ; that the sources of none of 

 these rivers are as yet known ; that south and west of the 

 Chobe runs the Zonga, another very large river, neither end 

 of which has been found, but it is supposed to empty into the 

 Zambesi ; that one or two hundred miles further south is the 

 Limpopo River, also unexplored either way. It seems pro- 

 bable, from these documents, that there is a large and fertile 

 region well watered, wooded, and peopled, on the spot gene- 

 rally set down as the lower part of a great desert, lying 

 within a space bounded by longitude 20° and 35°, and lati- 

 tude 10° and 20°. — [American Annual of Scientific Discovery 

 in 1853, p. 383.) 



On the Crystalline Form of the Globe. By M. DE Hauslab. 



M. de Hauslab, in a recent publication, after discussing 

 the direction of mountains, and of dikes and of cleavages 

 among rocks, deduces some general principles with regard 

 to their direction, and then explains his hypothesis that the 

 surface of the globe presents approximately the faces of the 

 great octahedron. In an octahedron there are three axial 

 planes intersecting one another at right angles ; and the po- 

 sitions of the circles on the earth's surface, which he lays 

 down as the limits of these planes (or their intersection with 

 the surface), are as follows. The first circle is that of 

 Himalaya avid Chimborazo, passing from Cape Finesterre to 

 the Himalaya, Borneo, eastern chain of New Holland (leaving 

 on its sides a parallel line in Malacca, Java, and Sumatra), 

 to New Zealand, thence to South America, near Chimborazo, 

 the chain of Caracas, the Azores to Cape Finesterre. The 

 second passes along the South American coast, and the north 

 and south ranges of the Andes, the mountains of Mexico, the 

 Rocky Mountains, Behring's Straits, the eastern Siberian 



