46 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IV., No. 75. 



skinners that had been employed by Dr. Fischer, and 

 of a botanical collector trained under Sir John Kirk, 

 of whose kindness and assistance he speaks in the 

 highest terms. Mr. Johnston, in spite of the trying 

 climate of Zanzibar, was in excellent health, and had 

 strong hopes of the success of the expedition. 



We are pleased to learn that Mr. Joseph Thomson 

 has arrived safely at Zanzibar from the expedition 

 he undertook to the Masai region. It will be re- 

 membered that Mr. Thomson left England in the 

 end of the year 1882; his object being to proceed by 

 Mount Kilimanjaro to the almost unknown country 

 of the Masai, and to settle the question of the exist- 

 ence of a Lake Baringo to the east of Victoria 

 Nyanza. Mr. Thomson left Zanzibar in the spring of 

 last year, but, after proceeding some distance, found 

 the country so disturbed owing to the recent passage 

 of a German explorer, Dr. Fischer, that he was com- 

 pelled to return precipitately to Mombasa. In July 

 last, however, he started again, and has evidently 

 accomplished his work in a way quite worthy of his 

 previous record. Passing round the north-eastern 

 side of Mount Kilimanjaro, Thomson proceeded north 

 to Lake Naivasha, halfway between Kilimanjaro and 

 Mount Kenia; then on to the latter mountain, and, 

 by way of Lake Baringo, to the shores of Victoria 

 Nyanza. This latter lake he skirted as far as the 

 outlet of the Nile, returning by a more northerly 

 route, striking the west coast of Lake Baringo, and 

 proceeding south and south-east by Ukambani to 

 Mombasa. It is satisfactory to record that no lives 

 have been lost except by illness. The telegram which 

 the Geographical society has received from Sir John 

 Kirk does not, of course, enter into minute details; 

 but, from its general tone, it is evident that Mr. 

 Thomson will have an interesting and instructive 

 story to tell when he returns. The telegram does 

 not state positively that Mr. Thomson found a lake 

 where Baringo is placed on our maps ; but, as Baringo 

 is mentioned as having been touched at, it seems 

 most probable that the information obtained from 

 natives by the sagacious Wakefield is correct. All 

 the country traversed by Mr. Thomson's expedition 

 to the north of Lake Naivasha is new ground, hitherto 

 untraversed by any explorer. Dr. Fischer, in his 



recent expedition, reached only as far as the lake just 

 mentioned. 



— In the anthropological section of the British 

 association meeting at Montreal, the following spe- 

 cially American topics, as to several of which Canada 

 affords important evidence, are suggested for papers 

 to be read : The native races of America, their phys- 

 ical characters and origin; Civilization of America 

 before the time of Columbus, with particular ref- 

 erence to earlier intercourse with the old world; 

 Archeology of North America, — ancient mounds and 

 earthworks, cliff-dwellings and village-houses, stone 

 architecture of Mexico and Central America, etc. ; 

 Native languages of America; European colonization, 

 and its effects on the native tribes of America. The 

 papers on each subject will, as far as possible, be 

 grouped for reading on the same day, so as to insure 

 a general discussion. 



— The Daily Iowa capital of June 24 contains an 

 account, by Prof. H. W. Parker of Grinnell, of a large 

 mammoth recently found in that city in digging a cel- 

 lar. One of the remains is a molar tooth fifteen inches 

 long, and which might have been sixteen or more 

 inches before the end of the crown was broken off 

 and lost. It weighed fifteen pounds when first un- 

 earthed. The other principal relic is a tusk, which 

 must have been at least eleven or twelve feet long : 

 it now measures, along the centre, seven and a half 

 feet, and, where broken off at the end, the diameter 

 is four inches; the largest diameter is eight inches. 

 Two years ago a small tooth, and fragments of bone, 

 including part of pelvis, were found in digging a cel- 

 lar adjoining. Other fragments were exhumed last 

 year from a cellar about three rods north of the site 

 of the tusk. The tusk occurred five feet below the 

 surface, the tooth and other fragments about eight, 

 in yellow clayey loam. The Davenport elephant- 

 bones, from a railroad cut in the bluff, were found 

 in yellow clayey loess, twenty-one feet below the 

 surface, and separated by three feet of bluish clay 

 from an old peat-bed and ancient soil, probably simi- 

 lar to that which is said to exist everywhere under 

 our prairies, at an average of twenty-five or thirty 

 feet below the surface. At Davenport the bowlder 

 clay of the glacial period underlies the ancient soil. 



— One of the results of the deep-sea dredgings of 

 the Albatross was the discovery, at a depth of nine- 

 teen hundred and seventeen fathoms off the Atlantic 

 coast, of probably the largest known amphipod crus- 

 tacean, Eurythenes gryllus Bock. The few previously 

 known specimens came from Cape Horn, Greenland, 

 and Finmark, and have apparently all been taken 

 from the stomachs of fishes. This species, and its 

 occurrence in the extreme arctic and antarctic seas, 

 have been much discussed, and are the subject of a 

 long memoir by Lilljeborg ; but the apparently anom- 

 alous distribution is explained by its discovery in 

 deep water, off our middle Atlantic coast. 



— Dr. C. V. Riley, U. S. entomologist, has gone to 

 Europe, partly for rest, partly on special work of the 

 U. S. agricultural department. 



