Abstract
ON Monday week Lord Aberdare opened the fifty-second session of the Geographical Society with a brief address, in which he dealt first with the expedition of Dr. Matttucci and Lieut. Massari across Africa. He next referred to the geographical papers read at the York meeting of the British Association, and afterwards dwelt at some length on the International Geographical Congress at Venice. According to Lord Aberdare's view it is a great mistake to mix up exhibitions with these Congresses, as, owing to international jealousies, it becomes necessary to withdraw the best men from the sections of the congress to serve on the juries of the exhibition. Lord Aberdare referred particularly to the miserable show made by this country in the Exhibition, which was solely due to the parsimony of the Treasury, who did not even pay the travelling expenses of the British Commissioners, and merely sent 100l. to the Vice-Consul at Venice for petty disbursements! The latter part of the address was chiefly devoted to the Arctic expeditions of the Jeannette and the Eira, and we are glad to notice that so much confidence is felt regarding the safety of Mr. Leigh Smith's party. Mr. F. A. A. Simons afterwards read a paper of considerable geographical interest on the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and its watershed, and he certainly has thrown much light on this almost unknown region, i.e. in the north-west corner of South America. The water-system, which Mr. Simons was at much pains to explain clearly, consists of the Rio Cesar, with its affluents, the Rio Rancheria and others falling into the Caribbean Sea, and the two large rivers which form the Grand Cierraga. Mr. Simons, who has spent some three and a half years in the country in natural history researches, has already contributed to the Geographical Society's Proceedings a paper on the topography of the Sierra Nevada, so that its geography can now be well understood through his labours.
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Geographical Notes . Nature 25, 89 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/025089a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/025089a0