line as shown in the Portolanos. The coasts of Arabia, Persia and India, are, with some slight changes, identical with those of Ribero. The farthest east, shown on the map, is Isla de Santa Cruz, an island a little to the east of Canton. The mapping of the East India Archipelago is very much the same as that of Ribero's maps of 1529, except that the south coast of Java and the east coast of Gilolo are shown.

The interiors of the continents contain but few names, and are for the most part occupied by quaint drawings of men, camels, elephants, ostriches, crocodiles, basilisks, etc. Of the rulers of different countries, so common in the maps of the sixteenth century, there is only one given, and that is a figure representing Prester John of Ethiopia, under which the following inscription is written: "A qui abita el preste Juan de las indias tienen tres bautismos de agua y fuego y sangre guardan la dotrina de S. Matheo." Every fifth meridian and every tenth parallel is drawn, and the degrees of longitude are reckoned both east and west from a prime meridian which runs a little west of the island of Fayal, and in the eastern hemisphere passes through Java and Annam, thus showing Asia as extending by about 40° of longitude too far to the east. On long. 20° W. the papal line of demarcation (Meridianus Particionus) is shown. It crosses America at the mouth of the Amazons, but assigns all the land east of the mouth of the Ganges to Spain, which is distinguished from that assigned to Portugal by the flags of each nation drawn on the southern hemisphere on either side of the line of demarcation.

In the accompanying letterpress a detailed description of the map is given, and a list of names that appear on it; these are printed in red or black according to the colours in which they appear in the original map. The work of reproduction, so far as it goes, has been carried out in a most satisfactory manner by the officers of the Swedish General Staff. It would, however, have been more satisfactory if the colouring of the original map had appeared, as it would then have been in all respects a facsimile.

A NEW MAP OF SWITZERLAND.*

THE task of the map-compiler, with regard to the physical features of the Central Alps, has been greatly lightened of late years. Specimens of the old Alpine maps engraved prior to, or without reference to, the Dufour Atlas or 1: 100,000 Swiss map, are still extant in so-called modern atlases. But most cartographers have known how to avail themselves more or less of this material. Their difficulty has been with the southern slope, where the old Piedmontese and Lombard Surveys were very inaccurate. The late Mr. Nichols did his best to bring together the valuable

* Stanford's New London Atlas Map of Switzerland, scale 8 miles to 1 inch. London: E. Stanford.

work of Mr. Adams Reilly and other Alpine explorers in the beautifullyengraved Alpine Club map, published in four sheets by E. Stanford in 1874. The map, on a scale of 8 miles to an inch, now issued by the same firm has the advantage of dealing with a region, the recent government survey of which has, except in a few localities, been completed. The problem has been not so much to gather together trustworthy material as to reproduce on a comparatively small scale the material in hand in such a way as to give at once an accurate and intelligible bird's-eye view of the chief features of the Alps-their ridges and valleys, their snows and lakes. For the first time, in a map intended for a genreal atlas, the glacier region is clearly defined, and its comparative extent in different districts made visible at a glance.

The map has been drawn with the greatest care and nicety from the latest Swiss, French and Italian surveys, and the Alpine Club Map, on a scale of 4 miles to an inch, and then reduced by photography to half that scale, the artist-draughtsman's work being reproduced by sunengraving with absolute fidelity. The result is very clear and intelligible, and, except that the relative steepness of the snows is not indicated, the sheet gives a very accurate idea of the general topography of the region depicted. In the special copies, a hundred of which only have been printed, no names have been inserted. Roads and railways, as laid down, have been carefully brought up to date, though in one or two instances slight omissions occur, e.g. the roads in Val Masino, and up the gorge known as the Via Mala Bergamasca in the lower Val Schilpario. The production of maps by sun-engraving, though largely and successfully practised in Austria and in other countries of Europe is, as regards Great Britain, an innovation, and it is to be hoped that the very satisfactory results obtained in the present instance may encourage map-producers in this country to make use of this process which has the advantage of giving an exact reproduction of the actual work of the skilled draughtsman, and therefore avoids all possibility of error after the work has passed from him into the hands of the engraver.

FLOODS IN QUEENSLAND.

By HENRY O. FORBES.

THE telegraph has brought us during the past month distressing accounts of floods of a very disastrous character in the southern portion of Queensland. The districts which have suffered most severely are those lying near where the Brisbane, the Burnet, and the Fitzroy rivers fall into the Pacific, namely, the Brisbane in Moreton Bay, the Burnet in Hervey Bay, and the Fitzroy in Keppel Bay, along a coast-line of 420 miles. The details of the calamity that have reached this country refer chiefly to the districts in the

neighbourhood of the capital, Brisbane, where the floods seem to have been exceptionally disastrous. The city is situated in a deep bend of the river of the same name, 25 miles from its mouth, chiefly on its northern bank, but with an important suburb on the southern side. South Brisbane is connected with the city, as is stated in Wallace's 'Australasia,' by a "noble iron bridge more than 1000 feet long with two swing openings of 60 feet wide each to allow the passage of ships," a statement which, though true up to the beginning of February is unfortunately no longer so. It is situated on much lower ground than the main part on the opposite bank, and it is naturally, therefore, the portion of the city in which the destruction of property and life has been greatest. In the west-end of South Brisbane we learn that only some twenty-five houses are left standing out of five hundred, and these were covered several feet deep in water, while between thirty and forty persons have been drowned. Those who had lost their homes were compelled to live in tented boats. The northern portion of the city is laid out in terraces rising to several hundred feet above the river, and consequently none of the important public buildings and chief residences would be imperilled. The streets by the narrow river-flat at the bottom of the rise have, however, suffered severely. The Botanical Gardens extend from the river-side on a steep slope up to the grounds of Government House, and it must, therefore, be their lower portions only that have been destroyed. They are situated at the western corner of the bend, and the river evidently taking a short cut over, has swept the flats in the centre of the city to the north-west of the Gardens, and the lower terraces of the Gardens themselves, carrying with it the two steamers-probably small river steamers, many of which have their anchorages a little farther round the bend-which have been stranded amid its trees. The chief loss the city has sustained is undoubtedly the destruction of the fine bridge already referred to uniting the two parts of Brisbane, which was erected at a great cost, and took nine years to build. It is reported that property to the value of £2,000,000 sterling has been destroyed in the town and suburbs; but, it is to be hoped that this may prove to be an over-estimate. This is not the first, though it appears to have been the most serious inundation that has befallen Brisbane, and the region now again affected. Only a few years ago the capital and many of the coast towns and districts were flooded, much property destroyed, and several lives lost.

The greatest amount of rain falls in Queensland during the summer months from December to February, and chiefly on the mountain ranges running north and south parallel to the east coast at distances varying from 20 to 100 miles. These ascend rather abruptly to broad plateaus of from 1500 to 4000 or 5000 feet above the sea. The rivers along whose lower reaches the floods have, according to our latest

information, been most destructive collect their waters over 8° of latitude, commencing in the north where the range runs out on to the coast, and extending south to the New South Wales boundary. Whether the Darling River, whose tributaries drain the western slopes of these ranges into the Murray and the Indian Ocean, and the Burdekin River, whose southern affluent (with its branches), gathering its supplies from the western aspect of the same coast range, falls into the Pacific after running north through 5° of latitude,—participated in these floods we have as yet no intelligence. The Brisbane has much

the shortest course of the rivers that drain this triangular area; but it has a steep gradient, and a very tortuous course, especially in the vicinity of the city, which by preventing a sufficiently rapid outflow into the bay, accounts for its great rise and destructive effects.

Some accounts state that the floods have spread "to the west of Brisbane, via Ipswich, as far as Toowoomba, the main town of the great agricultural district of Darling Downs." Ipswich, the second town of importance in the colony, is situated on the lowlands, and is a seaport at the head of the navigable water of the Brewer (a southern tributary of the Brisbane) River, 25 miles west of the capital, and may have suffered to some extent from the floods; but it is chiefly placed on hills rising considerably above the reach, we believe, of even very great inundations. But that Toowoomba, lying 100 miles west of Brisbane, could be reached by the floods from the lowlands is impossible, as it stands on the edge of the plateau of the Darling Downs, nearly 2000 feet above the sea. It is from Toowoomba that the western line from Mitchell, and the Great Southern Railway from Sydney and Adelaide, descend the abrupt escarpment facing the Brisbane plain, by a well-known zig-zag line. It is probable, however, that the heavy rains on the plateau may have caused damage to the town and that famous agricultural district, or to this railroad which in its descent crosses numerous ravines which no doubt were converted into raging torrents.

Past the town of Gympie, 116 miles north of Brisbane, runs the Mary River, which drains the northern slopes of the watershed of the Brisbane River, and flows north by Maryborough-on the alluvial flats 25 miles from the mouth of the river-into Great Sandy Strait. All along this river, therefore, as might be expected, great damage has been done to private and public buildings, while the gold mines round the former town-the richest and most important in South Queensland— have been filled with water, and will be unworkable for a long period. The Fitzroy, which passes Rockhampton and enters the sea in Keppel Bay, has tributaries along 380 miles of country from north to south and for nearly 200 miles to the west, where the western edge of the plateau recedes farthest from the sea; the amount of water, therefore, which it must collect from this area during sudden or long-continued rains must be enormous, and it is not surprising to learn that there has been great No. III.-MARCH, 1893.]

R

devastation along its banks and in Rockhampton, which lies 40 miles from the sea. The southern coast hills have, as a rule, a less rainfall than the northern, and their eastern slopes receive more than their western. On the high coast plateau 30 to 70 inches per annum fall on the east side, while on the west side 15 to 30 inches only are registered. The southern parts of these ranges appear to be periodically subject to unusually heavy rains, and their rivers, either from their steep gradients or the enormous extent of their catchment basins, produce floods along these 400 miles of coast-line, and doubtless in some parts of Victoria, as the Condamine, one of the great tributaries of the Murray, rises in the Darling Downs. It will be evident by a glance at the map that the whole of the region which has recently been inundated in Queensland, as well as much of Victoria, might be affected by a sudden heavy or continued rainfall over a comparatively small region north-west of Brisbane, restricted to the eastern parts of the Darling Downs, and the southern part of the Burnet, and the eastern corner of its neighbour, the Leichardt country, as the Condamine and all the rivers discharging along these 420 miles of coast-from Rockhampton to Brisbane-rise in or receive important tributaries from this circumscribed area.

DISTRIBUTION AND MOVEMENT OF POPULATION IN INDIA.

THE results of the late census of India, with regard to the distribution and movement of population, were put before the Royal Statistical Society, in a paper read in December last by Mr. Baines, the Census Commissioner. These subjects being intimately connected with the varying physical features and climatic characteristics of different parts of the country, it is impossible to deal with the latter as a whole. Taking these two points into consideration, and omitting the mountain frontier, only a fringe of which is touched by the census, India may be broadly subdivided thus: Firstly, come plains, some drained by large rivers, with a certain rainfall; others (in the meeting zone of the two branches of the south-west monsoon) fertile, but with more uncertain seasons; and one (in the lower Panjab and Sindh) either desert, or dependent for crops on irrigation. Next, we have the tablelands of the Deccan, &c., still more liable to deficient rainfall, from their situation between two monsoon currents, and with, accordingly, less productive soil. Thirdly, the forest-clad hill tracts, between the latter and the plains, with fairly abundant rain, but of which no large proportion is arable land. Lastly, the coast-strips, mostly fertile, and in the extreme south, a tract with good soil, but capricious rainfall. The average density of population in India, 184 to the square mile, is not great, but there is great unevenness in its distribution. In British territory 45 per cent. of the population occupy only 16 per cent. of the area with a density more than double the mean for the whole, which is 230. In two districts, in Eastern Bengal and along the Goghra, a maximum of 790 is reached; yet even here, owing to the great natural advantages, the pressure on the land is probably no greater than in other less fortunate tracts with a much smaller density; as, e.g., the east of the Deccan and parts of Madras, which, with a light soil and precarious rainfall, support only 122 to 150 per square mile. On the other hand, wide tracts are capable of supporting a much larger population than the present.