This work, which has recently been begun, is expected to occupy about a year. The commissioners start from Point Plaza, on the coast, and fix the boundary round the west and south of the British colony as far as the frontier of Dutch Guiana. Their determination of the boundary is without prejudice to the claims of Brazil in the south.

GENERAL.

Canadian Polar Expedition.-Captain Joseph C. Bernier, of Quebec, in connection with his proposed expedition to the North Pole, will lay two plans before the Canadian Government, based upon a long experience of Arctic seas, and said to be approved of by the best Arctic authorities. The first is that the expedition should start by way of Behring Straits, follow the coast of Siberia, and entering the ice between 165° and 170° of longitude E., push as far north as possible. He expects to reach the Pole and return in three or four years. His second plan, which has been submitted privately to the Quebec Geographical Society, is to start from Franz Josef Land with a large number of dogs and reindeer, and travel to the Pole during the summer by means of sleighs, subsisting on concentrated provisions and freshly killed reindeer. Travelling at an average of six miles per day, the journey to the Pole is estimated to take one hundred and fifty days, when he expects to have enough provisions to return towards Spitzbergen before winter sets in. He estimates that ten days of light will remain for the return journey, at the expiration of which he will winter on the ice. Captain Bernier will take with him from twelve to fourteen men, all scientists, and none merely sailors or labourers. He attaches great importance to the Marconi system of telegraphy for communicating with his base.

The Geological Survey.-Sir Archibald Geikie retires from the post of DirectorGeneral of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom on March 1st.

NEW BOOKS.

The Illustrated Guide to Algiers. A Practical Handbook for Travellers. By JOSEPH C. HYAM. Profusely illustrated by full-page Engravings and numerous Illustrations in the Text, also Maps and Plans. Algiers: The Anglo-French Press Association, 1899. Pp. xii + 230.

The author of this work is editor of the Algerian Advertiser. He has spent some fifteen winters in Algiers, and in producing this handbook he has in view the needs of English-speaking visitors. It is divided into five parts, which deal with Algiers-general description, the town of Algiers, the environs of Algiers, the interior, and practical information. The chief characteristics are that it is emphatically practical and illustrated. While it merits high commendation in both these respects, it cannot be too highly commended for its illustrations. Many of these are from the author's own negatives, the others by well-known photograveurs of Algiers, and all have been specially taken for this work. Many of them are admirable both as works of art and as vivid and accurate aids to a knowledge of Algiers and Algerian life. Visitors to Algiers who have conned these beautiful illustrations will have the further delight of recognition on a personal visit. As a practical handbook it gives a great amount of information just of the kind that a visitor is most in need of and usually finds most difficult to obtain, such as "where to go shopping." While thus commending his work, we

have a word to the author; we beg leave to advise him to get the aid of an Arabic scholar to revise it for him, and to suggest that he give some account of the religious orders of Islam that are to be found in Algeria, and of the chief saints and marabouts with whom so many sacred buildings and places of pilgrimage are associated. We should also like to see some account of the literature dealing with North Africa. The maps are a railway map of Algeria and Tunisia, and a road map of the environs of Algiers.

The Welsh People: Chapters on their Origin, History, Laws, Language, Literature, and Characteristics. With two Maps. By JOHN RHYS, M.A., and DAVID BRYNMOR-JONES, LL.B. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1900. Pp. 678 + xxvi. It is said of an English statesman that he preferred a blue-book to a romance. It is a saying that may well be cited to introduce the notice of a work fully one half of which is based on the Report of the Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire. That Commission was appointed on March 27, 1893, and its Report was signed and delivered on August 26, 1896, forming Parly. Paper, 1896, C 8221, with Appendix to Report C 8242. The minutes of the evidence taken by the Commission are contained in five blue-books, which were published between 1894 and 1896. The present work consists of thirteen chapters which deal with the following topics :-the ethnology of Wales; the Pictish question; Roman Britain; early history of the Cymry; history of Wales from Cadwaladr to the Norman Conquest; the ancient laws and customs of Wales; history of Wales from 1066 to 1282; legal and constitutional history of Wales from 1282; history of land tenure in Wales; the religious movement; the educational movement; language and literature of Wales; rural Wales at the present day. There are four appendices which give a list of cantreps and cymwds; a discussion of pre-Aryan syntax in insular Celtic; a list of lordships in each county; and a note on the Welsh laws from the fifteenth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical MSS.

At the end of an introduction the authors give a brief description of the contents. It gives a good analysis of the book and shows the connecting thread of the several chapters. In the first, second, and third chapters they deal with the ethnology and origin of the Cymry, and in order to justify and explain their views, they discuss minutely some of the questions connected with the so-called "Picts," and the distribution of tribes in this island during the Roman occupation. Having shown that the Cymry emerge as a separate nation under the rule of Cunedda and his descendants when that occupation ceased, they pass on to state very briefly in the fourth chapter the Cymric history down to the death of Cadwaladr, when the kingdom in its more extensive sense came to an end. In the next (the fifth) chapter they treat of the history of Wales from that time to the Norman Conquest of England. Then they stop to describe the legal organisation and social condition of the Cymry in the tenth and the immediately succeeding centuries. In the seventh chapter they describe the way in which the greater part of Wales was gradually conquered by the Normans, and sketch the history of the last and greatest Cymric principality to its transference by conquest to Edward 1. In the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth chapters they are occupied in showing how, for nearly all purposes of government, Wales has become organised in the same way as England; how the old Cymric tribal notions of landholding and administration (which became by natural and easy stages very like to those of the feudal system) gradually disappeared under the influence of Norman-English officials, and by degrees developed into the land tenure of to-day; how a religious movement commencing in the sixteenth century VOL. XVII.

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culminated in a great revival in the eighteenth, and brought about the predominance of Nonconformity in the Welsh counties, the preservation and growth of Cymraeg, and an intellectual renaissance; and how this movement in its turn created a demand for schools and colleges, which has resulted in the formation of a system of Welsh public education as perfect as any in the United Kingdom. After that they pass on to give some information as to the language and literature of the Welsh; and finally, in the thirteenth chapter they describe the characteristic features of the most typical classes of the population of the Principality in our own day.

They have looked at the origin and history of the Cymry "not through the mists of Neo-Druidism or the bright but delusive atmosphere of mediæval romance, but in the clearer light of the evidence afforded by inscriptions, language, laws, and reasonably trustworthy chroniclers"; they have kept before their minds in the many problems to be solved the motto of the new-born University of Wales, "Goreu awen gwirionedd" ("Optima musa veritas"). On the historical side the judicial and comprehensive tone of the work is well displayed in the examination of the critical subject of Edward 1.'s relations with Wales, a question hardly less vexed than that of Edward and Scotland. Of some special value, both for their own merit and owing to the inaccessibility of materials, are the chapters on the land laws and the legal and constitutional system of Wales. Here the authors are indebted to Mr. Frederic Seebohm, one of their fellow-Commissioners, for the greater part of chapter nine on the Welsh tribal system and the history of land tenure in Wales, which will appeal to ethnographic as well as economic students. Science and common-sense are characteristics of the entire work, and it is this combination of sound learning and sound judgment that inspires increasing confidence, and along with the lucid order in which the facts are marshalled makes the perusal of this learned work as delightful as many a historical romance. We have ourselves been much appealed to by the ethnological discussions, and in regard to the problem of the pre-Celtic or non-Aryan inhabitants of Britain we commend to notice the dissertation in the Appendix by Professor Morris Jones, which adduces the evidence of comparative philology in support of the anthropological evidence that they belonged to the North African race now represented by Berbers and other Hamites-the Mediterranean or Eurafrican race of Sergi. This sheds a flood of light on the problem of the Picts.

As the work is on the "Welsh people" there is one thing we desiderate-an account of the Cymry beyond the borders of Wales, not only in the chief towns of the United Kingdom but in the Colonies and the United States.

The maps are of Roman Britain and of Wales in cantreps and cymwds (made by William Owen-Dr. Owen Pughe-about the end of the eighteenth century). The tables give a chronological list of English and Welsh kings and princes down to 1066, and a genealogy of the House of Rhodri. The work is well indexed, the first giving names and other words; the second, topics and terms.

Glacières or Freezing Caverns. By E. S. BALCH. Philadelphia: Allen, Lane, and Scott, 1900. 8vo. Pp. 337.

In this volume Mr. Balch gives an interesting account of the various kinds of subterranean ice formations, and more particularly of those which are met with in caves and other underground positions. He has himself visited and carefully described many notable glacières in Europe and North America, and he presents his readers besides with a descriptive catalogue of all those of which accounts have been published by others. An excellent list of authors who have dealt with

the subject concludes the volume. Mr. Balch reviews the various opinions which have been held as to the origin of glacières-some of these being peculiar enough. Thus certain authors have maintained that the formation of ice in caves is owing to the presence of salt in the rocks, while others have suggested that it may be due to the pressure on the water percolating down from the surface. Many of the explanations put forward would appear to have been based on the belief of the country folk, who almost always insist that the ice forms in summer and melts in winter. Most competent observers, however, believe that it is the other way about-that the ice is due to the cold of winter, while some think the formation is produced or helped by draughts and by evaporation and expansion of the air. Again, several writers have supported the view that the ice in caves is a relic of the glacial period, but that cannot be true, seeing that the ice in many caves, etc., disappears annually. According to our author, glacières are simply refrigerators, which preserve the snow and ice accumulated in them during the winter. The cold air of winter sinks into and permeates the cave, and by and by the water derived from melting snow, rain, or springs, becomes frozen. When once ice is formed it remains long after the ice outside the cave has disappeared. That these conclusions are correct is shown by the following facts. Glacières are confined to regions where, during part of the year at least, the temperature outside falls below freezing-point. Again, reliable observations show that the temperature of a glacière cave varies with that of the air outside, the range of course being much narrower. In winter the temperature is lowest, and as a rule below the freezingpoint, while in summer it is highest, and generally above the freezing-point. Moreover, ice is never found far from the mouth of a cave, but always near enough for the cold air to get in. Evaporation, according to Mr. Balch, is connected mainly with the melting, not with the freezing, of the ice. Reference is made to the frozen soils and subsoils and so-called subterranean ice-sheets and buried "fossil glaciers" of high Arctic regions, and the author is apparently of opinion that all these are due to the long rigorous winters-the depth to which the ice extends being determined by the depth to which the winter cold can penetrate. Here, we think, he mixes up matters. That the frozen soils and subsoils of the tundras of Alaska and Siberia are formed by the direct freezing of the ground no one can doubt. But the thick ice-sheets described by Kotzebue, Von Toll, and others, are true relics of the glacial period. This is shown by the simple fact that they contain remains of the old extinct or no longer indigenous mammals of Pleistocene times, while the deposits underneath which they are usually buried have likewise yielded abundant relics of the same period. We can heartily commend Mr. Balch's work, which contains by far the best account of glacières which we have seen, and notwithstanding certain inelegancies of style, can be read with pleasure. It is well illustrated with a number of plates reproduced from photographs.

The Colombian and Venezuelan Republics. With Notes on other parts of Central and South America. By WILLIAM L. SCRUGGS. London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1900. Pp. 350. Price 12s. 6d. net.

Mr. Scruggs is well qualified to write on the subject of this volume, having resided in the countries described from 1879 to 1899, having acted till 1893 as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to the two republics, and having subsequently acted as special agent and legal adviser of the Venezuelan Government in the now happily ended dispute as to the true boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana. If any are now interested in that prolonged dis

pute, they will find a detailed record of it and of the arbitration proceedings at Paris in 1899 in this volume. Unfortunately Mr. Scruggs does not print the full text of the Award then delivered, and whilst he somewhat triumphantly declares "The mouths of the Orinoco have been awarded to Venezuela, their true and rightful owner; and that, after all, was the great point of contention," he omits to give the qualifying paragraph of the Award, viz. : In fixing the above delimitation, the arbitrators consider and decide that in times of peace the rivers Amakuru and Barima" (which fall into one of the mouths of, whilst the latter forms the best entrance to, the Orinoco) "shall be open to navigation by the merchant ships of all nations, subject to all just regulations, and to the payment of light or other like dues. Provided that the dues charged by the Republic of Venezuela and the Government of the colony of British Guiana in respect of the passage of vessels along the portions of such rivers respectively owned by them shall be charged at the same rates upon the vessels of Venezuela and Great Britain, such rates being no higher than those charged to any other nation." A map to illustrate the frontier dispute, and maps of Colombia and Venezuela and several illustrations are given.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

London: Macmillan and Co., Limited.

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900.

In these hard and matter-of-fact days at the end of the nineteenth century, when a traveller who ventures to publish an account of what he alleges he has seen and done in distant lands must be prepared to find his statements promptly challenged and scrutinised, and to produce irrefragable proof of the truth of his assertions and the accuracy of his observations, what room is there, it may be asked, for another edition of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which are now known to be for the most part the work of imagination? But we hope there are still among us some, and indeed many, old as well as young, who will find a very sincere pleasure in perusing the first book of travels written or translated in the English language. Indeed, the editor claims for it that it is "the first, or almost the first, attempt to bring secular subjects within the domain of English prose." As may be expected, the style is delightfully simple and clear; there are no learned disquisitions or ponderous digressions to pad the book and weary the reader. As a picture of the condition of Christian faith and legend about the fourteenth century it is extremely amusing and instructive; and now and then we come across passages which anticipate modern inventions in a curious way. Take, for example, these lines which show that the Egyptians had anticipated the modern eggincubator. "And there is a common house in that city (Cairo) that is all full of small furnaces, and thither bring women of the town their eyren of hens, of geese, and of ducks, for to be put into these furnaces. And they that keep that house cover them with heat of horse dung, without hen, goose, or duck, or any other fowl. And at the end of three weeks or a month they come again and take their chickens, and nourish them and bring them forth, so that all the country is full of them. And so men go there both winter and summer." The work has been "reprinted rather as a source of literary pleasure than as a medieval contribution to geography," and as such it will be heartily enjoyed by all who can enjoy a story of fiction as well as of fact. To the travels of Mandeville have been added the narratives of two friars, "John de Plano Carpini, sent as an embassy to the great Chan by Pope Innocent Iv. in 1246, and William de Rubruquis, who travelled in the interests of Louis IX. of France in 1253, and the voyage of Friar Beatus Ordericus to Asia Minor, Armenia, Chaldæa, Persia, India, China, and other