The difficulties of approaching Reraima on this side must be very great; but it is a satisfaction to think that there is some good rummaging ground still left for the energies of the Young England of the future.

GEORGE YOUNG-Letter in the "Times."

1. GLACIS, a smooth slope. (Lat. glacies, ice.) A term used in Fortification.

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

A MOST remarkable natural phenomenon was observed yesterday morning, Friday, March 20, 1874. A gigantic tidal wave called "the Bore" made its expected appearance, accompanied by an unusually high tide, in the Severn. Anxious to see if the salmon fisheries would be affected by it, I, in company with Messrs Cadle and Bennett, of Westbury-on-Severn, members of the Board of Salmon Conservators, and the Rev. the Vicar of the parish, waited the arrival of the Bore at Denny Rocks, five miles below Gloucester. At 9.20 A.M. some boys perched high in a tree shouted out the warning, "Flood O!" "Flood O!" and then to a minute of her time, up came the Bore, sweeping with a magnificent curve round a bend in the river. Hurrying towards us with fearful force and velocity, rushed a dense wall of water, curling over with foam at its summit, and extending right across from bank to bank.

As the wave approached nearer and nearer, the "voice of many waters," accompanied by a strange and sudden blast of cold wind, was truly awe-inspiring. In an instant the Bore swept past us with a mighty rush and the whirl of a thousand race-horses passing the grand stand. Two angry precipices of water, the escorts on either side of this terrible wave, swept with terrific

weight and power along the banks, throwing high up into the air, and well above the pollard trees, a sheet of water mixed with mud and sticks. We all cheered the Bore as she passed, so grandly were nature's race-horses running their course. In a few moments after the Bore had passed, the river, which had been rather low before, "full up" from bank to bank, and, having previously taken marks, I ascertained that the sudden rise of the water was between 11 and 12 feet. An old man told me that this was as good a head as he had seen for 40 years. The tide following the Bore rose with great rapidity, and flooded the fields and roads far and near.

was

It was most interesting to see a barge plunge up like a rearing horse to take the Bore, while some frightened ducks swam out into the river and topped the wave in a most graceful manner.

The Bore is thus formed. A great tidal wave coming in from the Atlantic is narrowed by the funnel-shaped estuary of the Severn, it is then pushed forward by the weight of the ocean behind; mixed sea and river waters then assume the form of a wave, which beginning below Newnham, increases in height as the banks narrow, and ultimately subsides above Gloucester. A Bore also runs up the Solway and the Humber, where it is called the "Eagre" or "Hygre." FRANK BUCKLAND.

The curious phenomenon called the "bore," or "barre," described above by Mr Frank Buckland, may be seen any day on the river Parrett, just below Bridgewater; and as both the Severn and the Parrett flow into the Bristol Channel, the same tidal wave produces the "bore" in each of these rivers, the height of the "bore" being doubtless determined by the force of the tidal wave.

Permit me to suggest that the word "bore" may be a

corruption of the French "barre," the onflowing wave having the appearance of a straight line, or bar, drawn across the river.

This phenomenon is one familiar enough to the inhabitants of Calcutta in March and September. It is in the Sittang, however, between Rangoon and Moulmein (British Burmah), that the "bore " is seen in its grandest form. The river is the only one, I think, that ships go up but never come down again. I have never myself seen the "bore" come up the Sittang, but Burmese and Europeans have described it as enormous-utterly destructive, in fact, of all navigation.

Extracts from Letters in the "Times," March 1874.

THE SHIP CHALLENGER AND THE GULF STREAM.

By private letter we hear of the arrival of the Challenger, Captain E. Nares, at Halifax, on the 9th of May 1873. The letter contains some interesting accounts of the surveying in which the Challenger 1 is engaged. The bottom between Bermuda and the American coast was found to be fairly level, at a maximum depth of 2850 fathoms, to within about 150 miles of the land, where it rises with a rather abrupt inclination to the shallow water. Immediately outside the Gulf Stream a depth of 2425 fathoms was found, and inside only 1700 fathoms. The Gulf Stream was found to be about 60 miles broad, the pressure being manifested in the most unmistakable manner, as the stream ran past the vessel at the rate of over three miles an hour while she was anchored to a current drag, lowered into the stationary water below it, and forced to steam ahead at that rate to keep the suspending line straight up and down. The

serial 2 temperatures taken during the passage are extremely instructive and important, showing, as they do, that a band of warm water of about 64 degrees Fahrenheit, and 400 fathoms in thickness, extends from the eastern margin of the Gulf Stream to within a short distance of the West Indies, enclosing the Island of Bermuda, and actually raising the average temperature of its superficial water above that of the corresponding layer 600 or 700 miles further south. If this band is connected with the similar one, only eight degrees colder, which is known to exist on the opposite side of the Atlantic, off the coasts of Europe-as it in all probability does the old calculations concerning the influence of the Gulf Stream on the European climate, which merely take into account the actual volume of the stream itself as it issues from the Straits of Florida, will have to be reconsidered; for this vast body of apparently sluggishly moving water, 1000 feet in depth, and occupying the whole of the northern part of the Atlantic, must claim a considerable share in the combined general modification of climate.

1. CHALLENGER, a vessel sent out, in the year 1874, by the Government of this country, to examine the currents, islands, and sea-floor of the Atlantic, &c.

2. SERIAL, in a series or regular order. (Lat, sero, to join).

THE GREAT PAMIR STEPPE.

ALL evidence, traditional or scientific, points to the East as the habitation of our remote forefathers, and the light lately thrown upon the comparative structure of languages narrows the probable source of those, best known by Europeans, to a spot certainly not far removed from the birth-place of four great Asiatic rivers, which

flow approximately 1 towards the four points of the compass the Indus, the Yokand River, the Jaxartes, and the Oxus. These all spring from waters poured down from the Great Pamir Steppe 2 and its neighbouring mountains. Trace them from their mouths to their sources, and you always approach one central district. Trace back the migrations of the Hindus and Persiansof the Aryan races, we may say you come upon Badakshan and the slopes of Pamir. The languages of these nations are but developments of a "mother tongue," still spoken by "ancient and broken tribes living in secluded valleys in the same region." Finally, the labours of comparative mythologists have caused those who seek for the origin of Greek and Roman myths, the wild legends of the North of Europe, and even our English fairy tales, to find them in the adoration of Nature's power, which stood for religion with the earliest ancestors of these very Hindus and Persians-races whose ancient homes seem to have been upon or near the slopes of Pamir. The great plateau of Pamir-the "roof," or rather "first floor of the world," in native language—is, as far as is known, at least 180 miles long by 100 broad, and may be said, on the average, to be about the height of the top of Mont Blanc. In winter it is covered with snow, but the summer sun causes this to disappear, and supplies its place with a mantle of the richest verdure. So rich is the pasturage, according to the description by every traveller who has succeeded in finding his way to the garden of Eden—as the plateau and its surroundings are held to be by many who have interested themselves in this very antiquarian research-that lean kine fed there become fat in a month, while the great sheep described by Marco Polo are abundant. Yet so light and keen is the air that the pulse nearly doubles its pace,

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