that reservoir or out of it as required. The trough-disk is fitted with a glass cover, which is screwed on when the mercury is to be passed to or from the other reservoir. When an observation has to be made this cover is removed, and a disk of glass is placed on the mercury; this gives a clear and steady reflecting surface. The weight of the instrument is 1 lb. The instrument is made by Messrs. Gould and Porter, successors to Cary, optician, No. 181 Strand, London.

Further disclosures of the Moabite Stone. By Dr. GINSBURG.

Ascent of the Atlas Range. By Dr. J. D. HOOKER, C.B., F.R.S. In this paper the author described his ascent of the Greater Atlas, accompanied by Mr. Ball and Mr. G. Maw. Permission was given him to visit the whole range of the Atlas from a point eastward of the city, westward to the ocean; but he was obliged to promise to confine himself to collecting plants for the Royal Gardens and to practising as a Hakim, so that he was unable to take any exact topographical observations. He, however, reached the crest of the main range visible from the city of Marocco, which has long had the repute of being the loftiest of the whole great Atlas range. The mountains present, as seen from Marocco city, a long ridge, apparently of tolerably uniform height throughout its whole length, about 13,000 feet, steep and rocky in the upper regions, with long streaks of snow descending in deep steep gulleys; but it offers no snow-capped peaks or slopes of any extent, nor glaciers, and the loftiest points of the jagged sky-line are not snowed at all. The party took, from Marocco, first a south-easterly course to the foot of the Atlas, in the province of Misfuia, and thence a south-westerly one to the province of Reraia, whence they had been assured that the crest of the range was accessible. Their camp, at an elevation of 4400 feet, was surrounded by olive and walnut groves, fig-trees, prickly pears, vines, mulberries, and almonds. The native trees were poplar, ash, juniper, willow, and callitris (the famous Thuja of the Romans); the bushes are lentisks, honeysuckle, cistus, elder, rose, alaternus, phillyræa, ivy, bramble, and shrubs allied to the broom. The climate is temperate, and the scenery rather pretty than grand or mountainous, except up the valleys, which are backed by the rugged, black, but snow-streaked crest of the range. At 6000 feet the party came upon the first indubitable signs of old glacial action, in a huge moraine projecting apparently from the flank of a lateral valley, with two smaller moraines nearly parallel with the greater one. All were loaded with enormous blocks of porphyry and other metamorphic rocks, and, except for the walnuts and little terraced fields, are nearly bare of vegetation. At about 9000 feet they came upon a mule-track, up which they pushed over rocks and débris. Dr. Hooker and Mr. Ball were botanizing, and Mr. Maw alone reached the crest, where he read his aneroid, which gave a height, by comparison with another aneroid and the boiling-point, of 12,000 feet. The temperature was 24° F. The most remarkable feature of this part of the range is the downward extent of the snow in steep deep northern gulleys to 7000 or 8000 feet, up to the end of May; but these snowstreaks are not connected with any snow-fields or snow-capped peaks above. This seems to be due to the climate and to the steep contour of the axis, which is now scorched by a blazing sun, now swept by dry Sahara winds, and throughout the year exposed to the very prevalent N.W. oceanic wind laden with vapours that fall as snow and hail-storms. There is thus probably always snow on this part of the Atlas, but there is no perpetual snow proper; in other words, all the snow that falls annually on fairly exposed surfaces melts in the same year. Botanically, the upper region is as bare as the middle region is rich, and the author described in some detail the characteristics of each. The Atlas has a special interest as presenting the southern limit of the Mediterranean, and indeed of the North Temperate flora.

The party proceeded from the beautiful valley of Reraia westward over the northern spurs of the Atlas to the province of Sectana, whence they travelled on to that of Amsmiz, crossing the Wad en Fys, the principal feeder of the Temsift, where the author and Mr. Ball ascended a peak 11,000 feet high in the main range,

and from thence saw across the Sus valley to the southward. The snowy axis here approaches to within some fifteen miles of the foot of the mountains, and consists of more isolated tops and far less steep ridges, though snow came down to 8000 feet on northern exposures. The floor of the valley, like the others, is very narrow, and clothed with walnut and olive cultivation, threaded by a brawling stream. The valleys of the upper feeders of the Wad en Fys occupy an area probably not less than twenty miles broad. Dr. Hooker saw no forest in any part of the range, clumps of brushwood and isolated stumps of oak, juniper, carob, and ash being all that remain of the primeval woods. These mountains are extremely bare; even moss and lichens are poor and rare compared with what other alpine and subalpine regions present. Low as is the latitude of Marocco, its vegetation shows that the North Atlantic determines its climate, favouring the dispersion of northern types up to the tops of the Atlas, and forbidding the entrance of southern forms that elsewhere prevail in similar latitudes. From Amsmiz the party continued to travel along the base of the Atlas, and made some minor ascents, obtaining a general idea of the character of the chain in this longitude (8° W.), where there is another broad depression, through which the road runs from Marocco to Tarodant in the Sus valley-a place once of immense commercial importance, and still one of great resort. The party returned to Mogadore on the 3rd of June, and succeeded in bringing their collections safely with them, which will enable Dr. Hooker to elucidate the flora of a hitherto almost unknown region. The Moors and Arabs of Marocco are described as being vile beyond a proverb. The Government is despotic, cruel, and wrong-headed in every sense. From the Sultan to the lowest soldier all are paid by squeezing those in their power. Marocco itself is more than half ruinous, and its prisons are loaded. The population of the whole country is diminishing; and what with droughts, locusts, and cholera, and prohibitory edicts of the most arbitrary description, the interior is on the brink of ruin. But that two thirds of the kingdom is independent of the Sultan's authority, being held by able mountain chiefs who defy his power to tax or interfere with them, and that the European merchants maintain the coast trade, and the Consuls keep the Sultan's emissaries in check, Marocco would present a scene of the wildest disorder.

A Journey from Yassin to Yarkand. By IBRAHIM KHAN.

Interior of Mekran. By Captain B. LOVETT.

Note on the Geographical Distribution of Petroleum and allied products. By Colonel R. MACLAGAN, R.E., F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S.

The extent and variety of the uses to which petroleum and other allied products have come to be applied, and the vast quantities in which, within the last few years, they have been obtained, give a special interest and importance to the observation of their geographical range and positions. The places are numerous, and the circumstances varied, in which these substances, in some one or other of their forms, have for long ages been known.

The classification of these products having certain general common characters, and probably a similar origin, is not now essentially different from that of Linnæus, and exhibits relationships before recognized in a less formal and systematic way by Pliny and others. They belong to Linnæus's class of "inflammable minerals," consisting, according to his arrangement, of bitumens, coals, amber, and ambergris. The bitumens he specifies as fluid bitumen or naphtha, rock-oil or petroleum, mineral tar or maltha, mineral pitch or múmia, asphalt, mineral tallow, elastic bitumen, and hard bitumen or jet. And next to the bitumens and coals he places honey-stone (found associated with asphalt), common amber, and ambergris. Prof. Archer, in a paper on the oil-wells of Pennsylvania and Canada (Art * Pliny, N. H. lib. xxxv.; Strabo, xvi.; Herod. vi. 119, &c.

Soc. Journ. Aug. 1864), says, "It may be useful to know that rock-oil, petroleum, Barbadoes tar, naphtha, are all varieties of the same material, and that bitumen is the pitch-like residue which remains after the refined oil is distilled from the crude, or has naturally dried away." These are the substances of which collectively the geographical positions are to be noticed.

The notices in old writers of the well-known sources of bitumen on the Euphrates and in Judæa are numerous, and these are the most frequent subjects of reference to these products in later times, till the remarkable naphtha-springs at Bákú on the Caspian, and the striking appearance which they present, came to be more generally known. The soft bitumen in the Euphrates valley is that of which we have the earliest mention. The word translated "slime" in the English version of Gen. xi. 3, is dopadros in the LXX. and bitumen in the Vulgate, and this is what is meant. Of the asphalt of the Dead Sea, its quantity, and the magnitude of the masses frequently found, there are many accounts in the writings of ancient and modern travellers †.

The great abundance of the petroleum at Bákú on the Caspian, and the remarkable sight presented by the flaming streams of oil and discharges of gas, have been the subject of many descriptions. One of the chief things of note at Bákú is this emission of inflammable gas or naphtha-vapour, which occurs also in many other parts of the world, with or without the immediate accompaniment of oil-springs. The fire-temple at Bákú has a special interest in connexion with India, not only from its general similarity to that of Jwala-Mukhi near Kangra in the Punjab, but also from the circumstance that the Bákú temple has, for a long time and down to the present day, been, like the other, a place of Hindoo pilgrimage, and maintains a small fraternity of resident Brahmans. The great conflagrations of oil on the surface of the ground have not been constant, and many travellers do not mention them; but they could not fail to have been mentioned by any who had

seen them.

Marco Polo describes the great abundance of the discharges of oil at Bákú, and says that people came from vast distances to fetch it §. Bákú is described by Kaempfer, who was there in January 1684 ||. Just a hundred years later it was visited by Mr. Forster on his journey from India to England. He has given a detailed and interesting account of the place, and of the Hindoo mendicants and merchants who resided there. He mentions that the Hindoo traders there were chiefly from Mooltan, and that they usually embarked at Tatta in Lower Sind, proceeding by sea to Bussora, and thence accompanying the caravans passing into Persia. I made endeavour to ascertain at Mooltan whether there is at the present day any direct intercourse between the Hindoos of that place and Bákú, but could not learn that it is kept up. But it is very possible that enterprising Hindoos from Mooltan who do not return there, and whose movements are not known to their friends, may settle down at Bákú as they do elsewhere. A Punjabee Hindoo died a few years ago at Moscow, regarding whose property in Russia and relations in the Punjab there was some correspondence between the Russian Government and our own in India and in England. Among the Hindoos at the Bákú temple Forster¶found an old man, a native of Delhi, who had visited all the celebrated temples of northern and southern India, and whom he afterwards met at Astracan. Morier, in 1812, met in Persia a Hindoo entirely alone, returning to Benares from a pilgrimage to Bákú **.

About midway between Kaempfer's time and Forster's, came Jonas Hanway, who gives a description of Bákú, the fire-temple, and the Hindoos, and the great quan

*Herod. i. 179; Philostr. Apoll. Tyan. i. 17; D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Or. s. v. Hit. + Strab. vi. 763; Plin. N. H. vii. 13; Joseph. B. J. iv. 8. 4; Tacitus, Hist. v. 6; Maundeville, Rochon, &c.

66 Bádkú and those fountains of blue flame

That burn into the Caspian."-LALLA ROOKH: The Veiled Prophet.

§ Book I. ch. iii. (vol. i. p. 46, of Col. Yule's edition, 1871). See also note in Marsden's edition.

i. 263.

Amoenit. Exot. p. 274, &c.; Lives of Celebrated Travellers (Colburn's Nat. Libr.), **Second Journey, p. 243.

TP. 262, note.

tities of oil, obtained then chiefly from certain islands in the Caspian. Descriptions are given by other old and modern travellers of this oil-region, the copious discharges of the white and black naphtha, the streams of flaming oil on the hill sides, the gas and the fire-temple, and the explosive effects of the ignition of the gas mixed with atmospheric air. An interesting communication was made in 1868 to the Geographical Society of Paris by Dr. Boerklund on the results of his transCaucasian explorations, in which he describes the naphtha-regions of the Caspian. On the Ile Sacrée, he mentions, not far from the Abscheron peninsula on which stands Bákú, there is now a manufactory of paraffine.

Dr. Boerklund notices also the association of these petroleum-fields with active mud-volcanoes. The connexion of petroleum with eruptions of mud and agitations of the earth's surface is noteworthy and important t. The most complete observations on mud-volcanoes, and the relation of these and similar phenomena to deposits of petroleum, are to be found in Prof. Ansted's paper on the subject communicated to the Royal Institution in May 1866, with immediate reference to the mud-volcanoes of Sicily and the Crimea which he had recently visited. There are mud-volcanoes in other parts of the world, in connexion with which petroleum has not hitherto been found. There are large volcanoes of this kind at Hinglaj near the south coast of Belochistan, which have been visited by a few British officers. So far as I am aware, no signs of petroleum have been found in their neighbourhood; but the country has not been well explored t. The petroleum of Kerman has been noticed by Pottinger §. One of the allied substances, ambergris, has long been a noted product of the adjacent seas.

The similarity of the phenomena shown by mud-volcanoes and gas-springs in the Italian peninsula, in the Caucasus, and in South America, is displayed over great tracts of country in the Chinese Empire ||. The use of the natural fires of petroleum and gas in the province of Shan-Si is described in an old account of the province by a native writer, Dionysius Kao, who says that in all parts of the province are fiery wells, which conveniently serve the people for cooking their victuals. (Possibly the "Temple of the Limit of Fire," mentioned by Fa Hian the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, was a temple over natural gas-flames like those of Bákú and Jwála-Mukhi ¶.) Similar gas-flames on the Caramanian coast are described by Capt. Beaufort **, as before by Pliny.

The country from which the principal supplies of petroleum were obtained in Britain, previous to the discovery of the enormous quantities to be obtained in America by boring, was Burmah. Of the petroleum wells in that country a full account is given in Colonel Yule's 'Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava,' and in the notes in the Appendix by Mr. Oldham, Director of the Geological Survey of India. In the Province of Pegu there is a burning hillock called the Nat Mee or Spirit Fire, of which an account is given by Lieut. Duff, Deputy Commissioner of Thyet Myo, in a communication to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, July 1861. The gaseous exhalations at Chittagong, called the Burning Fountains of Brahma, have been described by Turner, and more recently by a writer in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal ††.

There are many other parts of Asia and Europe in which these products, in some of their forms, are found and have long been known. In Assam petroleum is now obtained in considerable quantity by boring. The native petroleums of Southern India and of Australia have been shown in recent local exhibitions. In the interior of Sumatra springs of sulphur and petroleum were discovered in 1869. The petroleum of the north-western parts of the Punjab, known

* Wonders of the East, by Friar Jordanus (Col. Yule's note), p. 50; Hon. G. Keppel's Journey from India to England,' 1824; A Journey from London to Persepolis, by J. Ussher, 1865; Morier's Journey; Kinneir's Persia,' &c.; 'Some Years' Travels,' by Tho. Herbert, 1638. + Cosmos, i. 212; Scrope on Volcanoes.

An account of them by Col. A. C. Robertson, 8th Regt., is given in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1849. § P. 312.

|| Humboldt, Cosmos,' iv. 216; Huc, Chinese Empire,' ch. vii.; Davis's 'Chinese,' chap. v.

Beal's 'Buddhist Pilgrims,' ch. xvi. p. 68,

tt Vol. xii. p. 1055.

** Cosmos, i. 210.

and used since an early period, is now being worked. The chief purpose for which it is directly required is the manufacture of gas for one of our large military stations (Rawul-Pindee).

The great vigour and vitality of the flame of petroleum gave it a special value as a material for igneous missiles before the invention of gunpowder. It is only necessary here to notice this application of the mineral oils as indicative of the localities from which the material was probably obtained t. The Levant, the coast of Asia Minor, the Grecian islands, Sicily, and the Caspian, would furnish abundance of this material in some of its forms for the destructive engines and fire-balls used in the Eastern wars and sieges. There is good reason to believe that the Punjab petroleum was applied to a similar purpose by Mahmúd, of Ghazni, in one of his engagements near the Indus with the Indian prince Anandpal in the beginning of the 11th century. This question has been discussed in a most interesting note on the early use of gunpowder in India by the late Sir Henry Elliot, in the first volume of his 'Bibliographical Index to the Mohammedan Historians of India' .

The substance called múmia, or múmiái, is held in great estimation as a medicine for both internal and external use. The other substances of the same class are also used for medicinal as well as for other purposes §; but what is called múmia is used for this only. The current belief in the East is that múmia is of animal origin. It is worthy of note that recent researches have led to the conclusion that this is the case with respect to some, at least, of the great deposits of the mineral oils discovered within late years; but the animal origin of múmia is, in Persia and India, believed to be more immediate. That obtained in the shops at Lahore is said to come from Cabul, that is, in a general way it is obtained from or through Afghanistan. Dr. Fryer tells of a place in Persia where it was obtained in his time. Petroleum is abundant in the same quarter now. Another of the substances of this class, ambergris, has at all times been believed to belong, mediately or immediately, to some big animal of the salt water; but the conclusions regarding it are not even now very satisfactory ¶.

The geographical positions in which these various products in some of their forms are found, and in which indications of their existence, or the frequent accompaniments of them, are met with, appear to be sufficiently varied. They occur in great river-basins, in those of the Euphrates, the Indus and its tributaries, the Brahmaputra, the Irawádi; of the St. Lawrence in Upper and Lower Canada, the Ohio and Mississippi in the States of Ohio, Tennessee, and Arkansas, the Rio Colorado and other minor rivers in California and New Mexico. Next, we observe them very abundant in the two remarkable depressed lakes, the Caspian and the Dead Sea. In islands, Ceylon, Sicily, Zante, and other of the Greek islands, in Sumatra, and in a special manner in Trinidad near the mouths of the Orinoco. Along the skirts of great mountain-ranges and between mountain-ranges and the sea; thus in Pennsylvania and Virginia, in the country on either side of the Alleghanies; in Tennessee, intersected by the Cumberland niountains; in Texas, with its broken ranges of mountains parallel to the coast, and large rivers running from them and through them into the Gulf of Mexico; between the mountains and the sea in the south of Asia Minor, of Persia, and Belochistan.

*Notices of it are given in the works of Elphinstone, Burnes, Vigne, Edwardes, and others.

+ Accounts of the nature and effects of such missiles are given in De Joinville's 'Life of St. Louis,' and in the pages of Gibbon, Niebuhr, Hallam, &c., and more particularly in Messrs. Reinaud and Favé's Treatise on the 'Feu Grégeois.' See also Ammian. Marcell. ; Vegetius, ' De Re Militari;' Tasso, Jer. Del.' xii. 42-44.

The fire-pao mentioned by Polo, the agni-aster of the ancient Hindoo poems, and the fire-darts referred to by Menu, have possibly been of the same kind.

Hanway; Abbé Huc, 'Chinese Empire,' ch. xi.; 'Indian Annals of Medical Science,' no. iii. 250; Ainslie, 'Materia Indica,' i. 41; Honigberger, 'Thirty Years in the East,' &c. New Account of East India and Persia, nine years' travels, 1672-1681, by J. Fryer, M.D., p. 318.

Lane's Thousand and One Nights,' iii. 66; Yule's Marco Polo,' vol. ii. p. 342 ; Renaudot, 'Ancient Accounts of India and China,' p. 94.