284 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS— EUROPE. [May 24, 1858. 
Dr. Sandreczki has published an interesting work in three volumes 
of his journey to Mosul and Urumiyah ; and H. Zollinger, many 
years resident in the East Indian Islands, has recently returned 
there and recommenced his labours, which formerly were mostly 
published in Logan’s Journal of the Indian Archipelago. 
Theodor von Heuglin’s little work on a journey to Abyssinia, 
lately published at Gotha, and now in my possession, contains new 
matter on the western part of Abyssinia not visited by any other 
European. This author is the Austrian Consul in Khartum, and 
one of the most active and indefatigable travellers in Eastern 
Africa. A perusal of this work, so creditable to the enterprising 
traveller, particularly for the light which he throws on the zoology 
and botany of North-Eastern Africa, must be singularly gratifying 
to our countrymen ; since the author describes and figures a very 
remarkable species of Musa of great size, with violet or purple 
coloured midribs of the leaves, which proves to be precisely the 
wonderful plant the Ensete , described by the great Abyssinian 
traveller Bruce.* This reproduction before the public of Europe 
of another of the many original observations of Bruce — observations 
which to the disgrace of our country were formerly to a great extent 
discredited — has, I am happy to say, received a still more complete 
confirmation whilst I write, by the growth of this very Musa Ensete 
to the height of 40 feet in the Boyal Botanic Garden of Kew, by 
my friend Sir W. Hooker, who reared it from the seed sent to him 
by Mr. Walter Plowden, H.B.M. Consul at Massowah, Abyssinia, 
in 1853. 
Mr. Petermann published last year in the £ Mittheilungen’ a portion 
of the Diary of the extraordinary Hungarian traveller Ladislaus 
Magyar, of whom I spoke in the year 1853, and who has been 
residing for several years in Bihe, being married to a native prin- 
cess. He has recently sent home a portion of his w r ork and a 
detailed map of Benguela, intending to return to Europe in the 
course of this year and superintend the publication of this work, 
which is to appear in three volumes, with detailed maps. 
A young savant, Albrecht Boscher, devoting himself to African 
studies, has produced a work on Ptolemy’s Geography of Africa, 
in which he has attempted to show the correlation between the 
map of that geographer and the maps determined by the most 
* Vol. vii. (8vo. ed., 1805), Appendix, p. 140, and Atlas, PI. VIII. and IX. 
M. Heuglin makes no allusion to Bruce’s description of the ‘ Ensete.’ ( See Hooker’s 
Journal of Botany, No. XC., p. 210 ; also note on Abyssinia in the sequel.) 
