feet. The lake is then 100 miles long and sixty or seventy broad, and the water is not liberated until the end of the rainy season. The author exhibited to the Section a large series of photographic views, copies of inscriptions, and ground-plans,

Notes on the Physical Geography of the Lower Indus.
By Col. TREMENHEERE, R.E.

The immense plain of Sind presents a remarkable peculiarity throughout-1, in the entire absence of channels for natural drainage; 2, in its almost uniform slope, both towards the sea and away from the river banks; 3, in its mineral character. The slope of the valley in a direct line to the sea, 330 miles, is 9-3 inches per mile, and the lateral slopes on either side of the river are in many parts quite as much. The river, in fact, passes along a ridge. For 540 miles the surface slope of the Indus during the inundation is 5.7 inches per mile. The soil consists entirely of a very fine siliceous deposit mixed with argillaceous matter and mica; not a grain of sand is to be found as large as a pin's head. The solid matter in the water of the Indus during its inundation amounts to 43'6 parts in 10,000 by weight. The mean discharge of water being 200,000 cubic feet, and the mean solid matter 25 in 10,000, it results that 217 millions of cubic yards of solid matter are carried annually to the sea, which is sufficient to cover seventy square miles of area with deposit one yard in thickness. The author investigated the various old channels of the river, and came to the conclusion that the stream has gradually worked to the westward. He also concluded that the larger the body of water in rivers flowing through such plains, and the less the surface-slope of the plain, the more direct will be the course of the river; and, on the contrary, the sharpness of the bends of a large river will indicate the existence of a considerable slope. The longer, therefore, a river becomes by extending its delta into the sea, the greater tendency will there be to assume a more direct course. The author also carefully examined the delta of the Indus, and gave in detail the result of his observations.

On the Progress of the Russo-American Telegraph Expedition viâ Behring's Straits. By F. WHYMPER, F.R.G.S.

The author, after exploring parts of Vancouver's Island, attached himself, in the capacity of artist, to the expedition which proceeded last year from San Francisco to survey the line for the proposed Siberian and American telegraph. There exists already a line to New Westminster, Fraser River, from which point the new line is to commence. Five vessels started with the exploring parties in July 1865; one of them proceeded to Plover Bay, in Siberia, whilst the others were to meet at Sitka, in Russian-America. The vessel in which Mr. Whymper sailed proceeded through the Aleutian Archipelago to Norton Sound, in Behring Sea, and thence crossed to the river Anadyr, in Siberia. A small screw steamer, brought on board one of the larger vessels, took an important section of the party, under Major Kennicott, to explore the Kirchpak River. The average depth of Behring's Straits between 64° and 66° N. lat. did not exceed 20 fathoms. The author returned to San Francisco in November, the fleet having deposited the various exploring parties in their winter quarters on the coasts of America and Siberia. The preparations for 1866 were on a more extended scale; and by the end of the year it was supposed that about 1500 miles of the line would be laid northward of Fraser River.

ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS.

Address by Professor JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS, M.A., President of the Section. THE Presidents of the various Sections among which the scientific labours of the British Association are distributed have, beyond the general conduct of their several departments, the obvious and important duty of dwelling in their introductory address on the progress made during the past year in the special science with which they are for the time being identified. Nor is there ever wanting abundant

material on which this congratulatory comment may be made, as scientific research accumulates its observations, and arranges its inferences. The Mathematician, the Chemist, the Physiologist, the Geologist, the Mechanician, can point with satisfaction to the annual growth of their special sciences, can compare the demonstrations of the present with the hypotheses of the past, and can confidently claim the acknowledged progress which research and method have achieved.

The case, however, is somewhat different with the Section over which I have the honour to preside. We can but rarely claim that we have made any new discoveries in the subject which occupies our attention, for we deal with that which has been constantly matter of anxious thought long before the beginnings of other inductive sciences. Our science is as old as civilization, coeval with the first speculation on the canons of practical and political philosophy. We cannot claim to discover new elements, new forces, new economies, for we are interpreting that one force which effects the cooperation of man in social life; a force whose estimate has occupied the keenest minds since men began the habit of consecutive reflection. We have before us the phenomena of society, and we know that there is a standard, always ideal, but ever the legitimate, the chief object and aim of social practice; we know that there are hindrances to the attainment of such a standard, and in a general way that such a result may be best approximated by the wise balance of liberty and restriction. But the limits of the former and the endurance of the latter are matters of keen and constant debate, of doubt which may well be honest, even when it seems to be interested. We are invariably reminded that by the practice of men our demonstrations are forced to appear in the shape of problems, that our theories are often acknowledged to be indisputable, but are perpetually liable to dispute. No one I presume doubted, even when our system of trade was protective, that free exchange was the natural and normal state, however much it was conceived that artificial or political exigencies needed its modification. When our fiscal system, as we know now, was one mass of folly and injustice, the financiers of the age certainly imagined that they were patriotic, never doubted that they were intelligent, always affirmed that they wished to deal honestly with all interests.

But what our science lacks in novelty, what it needs in practical conclusiveness, it makes up in importance and interest. We do not, when we insist on the theoretical exactness of our principles, affect to deny that they are, perhaps must be, modified by certain overruling exigencies, and that the science and philosophy of social life will never exactly square with the habits of mankind. With many persons, the economist will always be a dreamer, the author of an impossible optimism, the dweller in a new Atlantis, in an impracticable Utopia, in a Cloudcuckoo town of unnatural alliances. Assailing, as he constantly does, the policy of restriction, he is attacking a fortress of undoubted strength. Striving as he constantly does against a social habit, a political maxim, a fiscal expedient, a commercial trick, he is struggling to undermine a position which becomes untenable at a time its defenders are reduced to acknowledge that its defence is impolitic, though it has hitherto been thought to be judicious; mischievous, though it has seemed to be salutary; destructive, though it has been believed to be expedient; interested, when it was averred to be national. He is constantly labouring to refute men's hasty sympathies by appealing to their deliberate reason.

We cannot then dispute the disadvantage under which economic science labours, when compared with other efforts of research, whose course encounters no obstacle because it clashes with no interest, whose conclusions are accepted graciously because they provoke no prejudice and awaken no fear. But we can, on the other hand, claim no small victory in this domain of human thought, and congratulate ourselves on a progress, not the less real because it has been resisted, disputed, and won, after many laborious struggles.

In the first place, then, no science occupies a more eminent position, because none deal with such exalted purposes. Political economy is perpetuallly contrasting general with special interests, urging men from narrow ends to the broadest aims, teaching the interdependence of men, of races, of nations. The Wisdom which has parcelled the earth out for various products, all necessary towards the development of the best civilization, instructs men also in the fact that as men cannot

labour for themselves alone, so nations must needs depend on other nations, and be knit together by the strong bands of reciprocal benefit, if they would work out their own highest good. Political Economy, as Adam Smith fully recognized, does not discuss the prosperity of a single people, but proposes as its object the discovery of the wealth of nations. It has been the privilege of the economist to disprove the fallacy that one people's gain is another people's loss, a delusion which was not too gross to possess the mind of Bacon, as it was the secret of the foreign policy pursued by this country for many centuries, as it has been the chief cause by which national rivalries and antipathies have been developed and sustained.

In the next place, the spheres of the economist and the statesman are rapidly becoming one. Domestic legislation is increasingly interpreted on economical grounds, assailed because at variance with economical axioms, supported because in accordance with economical demonstrations. A statesman would in these days be at once bold and foolish who affected to disdain economical consequences or defy economical laws. Now at least we find all parties, the representatives of all interests, appealing to the congruity of their policy with the truths of Political Economy. The abolition of the excise duty on malt is argued from one set of economical principles, its retention is vindicated on another. The regulation of the currency is defended on grounds which involved, on the part of those who uphold our existing system, the recognition of certain causes whose regularity was supposed to partake of the strictness of physical science; while those who dispute the wisdom of our monetary laws disparage the universality of the cause, and point to other principles which they assert the legislature has ignorantly violated. But, in effect, every course of public policy, every law or custom which deals with or affects the material interests of the community, is in course of being reviewed by the light of economic science. The incidence of taxation, direct or indirect; the tenure of land; the right of settling land; the relations of labour to capital, with the artificial machinery employed to diminish or increase the share which each of these contributories demands from the gross product; the functions of credit, and the power which it possesses over currency, or conversely, the influence of currency on credit; the interference of government with labour, particularly the labour of the young; and a host of other public questions, are not or cannot hereafter be treated from a sentimental or a politic point of view, but must be discussed in their economical bearings, in their influence on the general well-being of society.

Again, the same influences are being brought to bear on the relations subsisting between this and foreign Governments. The ancient habits and instincts of political diplomacy are silently or noisily wearing out or passing away, and a new diplomacy of commerce, assuming for a time the guise of formal treaties, is occupying no small part of the ground once assigned to labours which were called into activity by distrust, and effected their purpose by intrigue. And if, indeed, impolicy and injustice are legitimately open to remonstrance, and there be any defence for interfering, either by advice or threats, with the affairs of foreign nations, when their action is relative solely to those topics which once formed the material for diplomatic correspondence; such a course of procedure is just as legitimate when a Government is wilfully crippling its own resources, and inflicting wrongs upon the nation whose general interests it is bound to maintain, by a restrictive and minatory commercial policy.

Among the various questions of great economical importance which have been before the public during the past year, there are two on which, with your permission, I will make a few brief comments. These are the contingency, at no remote date, of a considerable exhaustion of certain mineral resources in this country and the altered position which England might consequently assume, and the present condition of what is familiarly called the money market. The first of these questions raises a variety of issues, the magnitude of which cannot be overestimated; the second is a crisis unparalleled for its severity and its duration.

Attention has been called by an economist, who has exhibited great research and original thought on a number of subjects, to the relations subsisting between the consumption of British coal and its future supply, Geologists, it appears, are well-nigh agreed as to the extent of the deposits, and as to the depth within

which, according to our present and in all probability our future appliances, such deposits can be rendered available. It is further admitted that the source of motive-power is heat, and that coal is, for practical purposes, the sole material from which heat can be derived. Should the consumption of coal in this country, it is argued, progress at the same rate as now, the supply will be exhausted at no distant date, and with such an exhaustion there must ensue a cessation of most of those industries which have hitherto characterized us. So energetically was this alarm seconded by one of our most distinguished economists, that a financial operation was proposed, with a view to palliate some of the evils which might be likely to ensue from such an event.

It cannot of course be denied that a limited quantity of any natural product, the demand for which is incessant, must ultimately be exhausted. But the real question, it seems, is, when will the scarcity-price operate on consumption, and when it does so operate, in what will the saving be effected? That the scarcity-price is not yet operative is manifest from the increase in the aggregate consumption of coal, and from the increased production of metals; for it is in the smelting of metals that the largest consumption occurs. Nor can it be doubted that when the saving becomes necessary from enhanced price the economy will be exercised in this direction. But the total value of all metals produced in this country in the year 1864 (the largest in value, though not the largest in amount, yet recorded) was worth little more than 16 millions, a great but not a dominant quantity in the annual aggregate of British industry. It would seem, then, that the alarm, if it be not premature, is certainly excessive; that there will be abundant warnings of future scarcity, and necessary economies in dealing with the residue, long before that residue verges to exhaustion.

Themateri al wealth of this country, it may be observed, greatly as it is related to its manufactures, one of the raw materials of which is locally limited, is far more fully derived from its geographical position, and thereupon its trade, the advantages and aids of which are permanent. Occupying, as Great Britain does, the most central position between the New and the Old World, it is and will be, so long as its people are industrious and resolute, the highway and the mart of nations. Its commerce, by virtue of causes which cannot be reft from it, increases at a far more rapid rate than its manufactures; and if that commerce remain unfettered and unshackled there seems no limit to the width which its markets may attain.

It would not become me, in an introductory address, to enter on the vexed question of the currency, and in particular to criticise the Act of 1844. Opinions are, as is well known, broadly and sharply divided on that famous measure. The Act, as my readers are aware, is restrictive. It interferes peremptorily, on grounds, as was asserted by the late Sir Robert Peel, of the highest public expediency, with the freedom of issuing paper credit. It secures the convertibility of a paper currency, not by the circumstances which a bank might be supposed to interpret for itself, by guarding on its own account on the possible risk of seeing its paper dishonoured, but by the rigid yet not unbroken rule of a proportional issue. With some thinkers this system is lauded as one of consummate wisdom; with others it is censured as one of needless and mischievous interference with that part of the machinery of trade which would be self-adjusting without it and which is not really supported by it. As a rule, indeed, when one set of persons, confessedly competent to form a judgment, decide that a law dealing with commerce is wise and useful, and another set of persons equally competent declare that it is foolish and mischievous, it will generally be found, in course of time, that the latter are in the right. Such was the case with the Colonial System, with the Corn Laws, with the Navigation Laws, with the Sinking Fund, with the laws regulating or prohibiting the exportation of Coin, with Bounties, with Export Duties, with the Favoured Nation clause in Commercial Treaties.

It has been stated, but not I think proved, that the cause of the present crisis has been excessive, or over-trading. As far, however, as can yet be discovered, it seems to be due far more to imprudent action on the part of certain banks, who have made advances at long dates, or on securities not readily convertible. The distrust which has followed on the failure of some among these banks has led to

the absorption of a large amount of the note currency by the solvent banks, with a view to making their position impregnable. But this retention of notes, as it has limited the amount of accommodation, has indirectly raised the rate of discount; and thus it follows that as long as the rate is high the notes are hoarded, and as long as the notes are hoarded the rate will be high. It is worth the attention of the Section to consider whether the contingency of such a dead-lock as the present may not, concurrently with the restrictions of the Act of 1844, or independently of them, be rendered more frequently imminent by the increased inducements in the shape of high rates of interests offered to the public on deposit accounts.

At all events, the present state of affairs is without parallel. Once (in 1857) the rate of discount touched 9 per cent., just before the relaxation of the Act. It has stood on the present occasion for some weeks at 10; and unless British commerce is now conducted under far more favourable circumstances than it could have been nine years ago, the effect must ultimately be ruinous to the trader-must speedily be followed by a great rise in general prices, and in all probability by a glut of capital at no distant date.

The discussion, however, of purely economical questions forms in effect the least, but generally the most exciting, among the topics laid annually before this Section. Its largest business lies, and will it may be hoped, constantly lie, in the direction of statistical inquiry.

The statistics published by the various Government Departments are annually of increasing fulness, of larger importance, of improved method. Their utility cannot be overrated, their value to those who are led to familiarize themselves with these certain and unprejudiced witnesses is of the highest character.

During the past year two papers have been issued, both I believe from the Poor Law Board, or at least compiled by means of its machinery, which have had a considerable public interest. I allude to the returns of Live-Stock, and to the Statistics of the Borough Franchises. The first of these is, we understand, to be continued, and to be accompanied by general Agricultural Statistics.

The origin, as we all know too well, of these returns of live-stock is to be found in the instance of the Cattle Murrain. The preventive measures employed to check the disease, and the scheme of compensation accorded to those whose cattle were sacrificed in order to save those of other cattle owners, almost necessitated a rough cattle census. Such a census has been taken in other countries for some time past, and, in common with other agricultural statistics, has been regularly supplied for Ireland. It is to be hoped that the prejudice which agriculturists have entertained against the supply of these and similar returns will speedily be obliterated. It may, I presume, be taken for granted that no Administration wishes to use these facts for any other purpose than that of general information as to the domestic resources of the nation at large.

The value of agricultural statistics does not lie simply in the aid which they may afford in indicating the probable course of the market, and in saving it from needless fluctuations, but in suggesting what is the probable annual deficiency in supply Many years have passed since this country grew enough food for its inhabitants. That its prosperity may be uninterrupted, it will be necessary that it should rely increasingly on foreign produce. That its people should be well fed, it is necessary that every facility should be given for the growth and importation of live-stock and

meat.

The Table of statistics giving information of the amount of cattle, sheep, and pigs, on the 5th of March, 1866, on the presumption that the returns are accurate, is singularly instructive. In drawing any inference on this subject, we should treat Great Britain separately from Ireland, as the importation of cattle from this part of the United Kingdom is more difficult than it would be from Belgium or France, and nearly as difficult as from Denmark and the Elbe. In round numbers, the population of Great Britain is about 24 millions.

In one particular only, that of sheep, is Great Britain on a general level with other countries. There is nearly a sheep to every head of population. But cf horned cattle there is only one to about every five; of pigs only one to every nine. Were the amount of horned cattle in France proportionate only to Great Britain, France would have a little more than six millions; in fact it has rather more than