FIRST ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, 21st October, 1867.

DR. NEVINS, VICE-PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and signed. Messrs. E. K. Muspratt and William Henry Dixon were unanimously elected ordinary members.

Mr. Christian Flück exhibited a flint saw, a knife made of bone, bone pins, piece of roebuck horn, and other implements, recently found in a Lacustrine dwelling in the lake of Morat, in Switzerland.

Mr. T. J. Moore exhibited some bones of the Dodo, lately presented to the Free Public Museum, by Mr. Walmsley Stanley, per Mr. R. C. Doyle and Mr. J. T. Towson; also the cast of the under jaw of a Mastodon, the original of which, with the greater part of the skeleton, was lately discovered near Albany, New York. The cast was presented to the Museum by Professor Hall, state geologist at Albany, and was brought to Liverpool by his son, Mr. C. E. Hall, who was present at the meeting. Mr. Moore read the following extract from a letter from Mr. R. B. N. Walker, Corresponding Member of the Society :

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"R. Fernan Vas, Camma, July 13, 1867

"On the 26th ult., a few days after my arrival here, one of the men who had accompanied me into the interior came to see me, and asked for powder and ball to enable him to fulfil his promise of shooting a gorilla for me.

object of his search, and for

He being a professed gorilla hunter, and having once killed no less than four of those apes in one day, I immediately gave him what he required. He went out the next day, but was unable to meet with the various reasons was prevented trying again until the 6th instant, when, on rising early in the morning, he heard the cry of a gorilla in the bush close to his village, and immediately started, accompanied by another lad, who was unarmed, with the exception of a hatchet to clear a passage through the dense bush. Guided by the noise made by the animal, the hunter soon obtained a view of him, and fired, wounding him severely in the right shoulder, and breaking one of his huge canine teeth. Reloading he fired again, striking him on the back, and breaking one or two of his ribs. The animal was unusually tenacious of life, and my man, having become separated from his companion, who carried part of the ammunition, had to go in search of him to procure some powder; when he returned, and at the sixth shot, the gorilla gave up the ghost. The spot where he fell was two or three miles from the house I am living in, and people had to be fetched to carry the huge beast, yet by 9.30 a. m. he was brought to my door. He proved to be a good sized fellow, a male, but not nearly so large as the one whose skeleton I presented to the Derby Museum, but nearly, if not quite, as large as the fine specimen given by Mr. Duckworth to the same institution. Now, as the hunter was only out twice in search of a gorilla, and on the second occasion soon met with and shot one, not three miles from the sea, and close to a village, I am confirmed in my previously entertained opinion that gorillas are by no means so difficult to obtain as has been represented, especially here at Camma, during the rainy season, when the fruit of the Mbimo tree is ripe.

"R. B. N. WALKER."

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Mr. F. J. Jeffery, F.G.H.S., called attention to the proposed visit of the British Association to Liverpool in 1869, and suggested that it would be desirable to hold a Centenary Festival in commemoration of the births of the great men born in 1769, in conjunction with the visit, should the Association accept the invitation which had been sent; and seeing the names of illustrious foreigners which appear on the list, he proposed that the celebration should be international. Among the names mentioned were those of Wellington, Napoleon I., Sir T. Lawrence, Humboldt, Cuvier, Forsythe, the inventor of percussion caps; Arndt, the German poet; Marshals Soult and Ney, Rev. W. Jay, of Bath, Sir M. I. Brunel, and the younger Watt, the Engineers.

The following paper was then read:

ON THE LIMITS OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE.

BY JAMES BIRCHALL.

THE Elizabethan age was so prolific of oceanic discoveries, and the knowledge of the earth's surface in almost every degree of latitude was subject to such constant variation, that it must appear, at first sight, a somewhat paradoxical task, to determine limits which were apparently so uncertain, and which were being yearly extended. But, although the information which Europeans possessed of foreign countries was necessarily confined within the shifting bounds of maritime discovery, there existed certain established impediments, which absolutely kept within fixed limits, for a time, that geographical knowledge which, had it been free of these, must have enlarged itself as discoveries extended. It is, therefore, my object in this paper, not to dwell so much upon the question of how much of the earth's surface was known, or unknown, but rather to review the principles of Physical Geography as they were then understood, to note the methods of observation adopted by those who, by their travels, were favoured with opportunities of informing themselves of the extent and condition of other countries, and to examine the speculations of those who, not having such opportunities, or it being impossible to have them, sought to account by theory for the occurrence of the various phenomena which surrounded them.

* It is proposed to investigate this question (chart making and chart knowledge) in a subsequent paper.

The age now brought under review, comprehending the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, belongs to those rare periods in human history wherein the achievements of mankind in every department of human effort burn with heroic glow, and are productive of the most momentous revolutions. In this illustrious age, the European world combined in one grand and determined effort for freedom of thought and freedom of action, and for an enlarged arena worthy of the exercise of both. The deliverance from feudal servitude and theological restraint which then resulted awakened in men's minds those long dormant powers which presently had full scope; the speculative philosophy of the School-men was soon displaced by an ardent love of experiment and curiosity of observation, and new fields were eagerly explored for the discovery of new facts and new existences. A wonderful accession was thus made to the number of natural productions; and the sudden increase in the necessities of nations, which thence arose, gave such an impulse to commerce and the arts, that the love of gain also co-operated with the desire for intellectual progress, and numerous expeditions were equipped, and even lonely journeys made by daring adventurers, for the express purpose of opening out new markets, and tracing out new routes through countries which had not been traversed since the times of Marco Polo, and the brothers Zeni.

The necessity for extended geographical knowledge, which was thus experienced by merchants, led to the publication of numerous books of voyages, atlases, and other works on cosmography, and the maritime countries of Europe, with their interests involved in colonisation, felt bound to grant state encouragement to the study of geography by the appointment, as in Spain and the Netherlands, of royal geographers, whose duty it was to obtain all the most authentic