960 General Notes. [ November, 
GENERAL NOTES. 
GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVELS.' 
GENERAL.—In a recent number of the Mittheilungen of the 
Geographical Society of Vienna, Dr. Penck takes issue with the 
usually accepted proportions of land and water (1 to 2.76), assert- 
ing that the unknown regions around the poles are too extensive 
to permit of any reasonable approach to accuracy in this respect. 
M. Rambaud gives the extent and population of the French 
colonies, or rather possessions. Including Tonkin and Mada- 
gascar, these comprise about 1,800,000 square kilometers, and 
about twenty-four and a half millions of people. In this total the 
population of the French Congo possessions is not included, and 
Tonkin is credited with only 12,000,000 of inhabitants. The com- 
merce with these colonies was, in 1883, about 915,000,000 of francs. 
Major Feilden, naturalist of the Arctic expedition of 1875-76, 
has given in his adhesion to the belief that through the secular cool- 
ing of our planet the poles became first fitted for the reception of 
life; that in Palaeozoic times the north pole possessed a climate 
at least as warm as that now experienced at the equator, and that 
during the Miocene period the temperature, though gradually 
cooling, supported a flora which spread southwards. 
America.— The Xingu.—Petermann’s Mittheilungen (Nos. 5 and 
6) contains a full account, with maps, of the German Xingu expe- 
dition of 1884. The Xingu is formed by the union of three large 
rivers: the Kuliseii, the Ronuro and the Batovy, the last of which 
falls into the Ronuro a little above its confluence with the Kali- 
seii, which may be considered the main stream. The expedition 
descended the Batovy, which flows in numerous bends through a 
flat country, but is intersected by many rocky strata forming 
rapids. After the confluence the Xingu flows through a level 
country till it reaches 10° S. lat. Here it enters granite hills and 
. the great bend of the Xingu, the cataracts upon which were explored 
by Prince Adalbert of Prussia in 1842-43. Within this bend the 
river falls 260 feet. At its confluence with the Amazons the 
Xingu is a mighty stream nearly five miles wide. The different 
branches of the Xingu are inhabited by no less than eighteen dif- 
_ ferent Indian tribes, though the total population does not exceed 
2,000. The Suya Indians live in beehive-shaped houses with a 
diameter of thirty-three feet. = 
| American News—Lake Tahoe is dethroned from its position 
= as the deepest lake upon the continent, Captain Dutton having 
_ found a depth of 1996 feet in Crater lake, Oregon. The aver 
age depth is about 1490 feet. The shores of this lake are very 
lis department is edited by W. N. LOCKINGTON, Philadelphia. 
