JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL
SOC IE TY.
IT is long since we met with a book so overflowing with interest- ing information as this journal, or rather emporium, of geographi- cal knowledge. The love of practical science, and the pursuit of geographical discovery, is at this moment in England rising fastto its acme. Its scat is neither at Cambridge nor Oxford; it is in London, amonc,c our sailors, among our soldiers—at the Admiralty —and at Woolwich and Sandhurst, at the Clubs, Junior and Senior United Service, and Athenfflum—at the Royal Institution, perhaps too at the Royal Society, and such places. Mr. Mutt- RAY'S shop has been the foyer of as much reliable information as any other spot whatever, however dignified or titled. We say this in gratitude to him for such books as the present, of which he is the literary accoucheur; and fbr which we are more seriously indebted to a Society of late origin, but which has been admirably sustained since its commencement. This is the second volume of its Transactions; and we have been utterly astonished at the value and extent of the curious information sup- plied by it. . The French, with few opportunities, and scanty advantages beyond the intellectual activity of their citizens, and that strong love of scientific distinction which has character- ized their swans since the days of CoLenam, have hitherto pos- sessed the grand field of geography almost by themselves - it is in the union, the concentration, and the ramification of the Geogr.a- phical Society—to say nothing of the patronage of the Colonial department—that we look for the establishment, not merely of rivalry, but of a superiority over the only people who can in most respects pretend to be placed on an equal footing with us.
it would not be easy in a small compass to sum up how.much and how various is the matter contained in this volume. There is an enormous quantity of solid and curiouo. de_tails respeatingAUs•
tralia both East arul West ; and, in a supplement, the latest re- ports from Colonel STIRLING communicated by the Colonial office. The routes and discoveries announced are accompanied by elaborate maps, -which put the observer into complete posses- sion of all that is now known of that most interesting country. There are also curious papers on New Zealand, the East Coast of Africa, the Brazils ; a very curious account of the geography of the Maldive Islands ; an elaborate survey of Anegada, a place probably not much known to our readers, but fatally marked to our West Indian sailors by the number of shipwrecks that have taken place upon the island. This is a very scanty account of the contents : we have said enough, however, to show that every per- son interested in geography must possess the book, and that no institution can dispense with it. As for general readers, who have probably been most of all pleased with the geographical papers of the Quarterly Review, let them understand that this Journal is wholly composed of that description of matter.
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