another trail over the mountains to the south, which brought us out, after four days of travel through the most beautiful scenery I know of anywhere in Tibet, at the post station of Pung-dé, the Pao-tun of the Chinese.

The worst part of my long journey was now over, for from this point I travelled in comparative comfort, with an escort of Chinese soldiers, relays of pack and saddle horses, and houses every night to put up in; though I still frequently preferred my tent, where I could enjoy some privacy and escape the attack of the fleas which swarm in all Tibetan dwellings, to say nothing of rats and other vermin.

The first town of any importance we came to after leaving Riwoché was Draya, or Chamdun Draya as it is also called, the capital of an ecclesiastical, semi-independent state, on an affluent of the Om ch'u, which flows by Ch'amdo.

The town is prettily situated on a gentle slope, the lamasery, as usual, occupying the higher part of it, with a little plain in front, beyond which flows the Ombo ch'u, here met by two other streams of considerable size. The crops were ripening and fields of barley and wheat covered every little patch of ground susceptible of culti vation. On high frames, with which every country house is provided, grass twisted in cables was drying for the winter's forage, and in some places, where the high precipitous mountains did not overshadow the fields too much and the crops were early, barley, wheat, and turnips, were already hanging on these frames, which are used everywhere in Tibet for this purpose.

Though I was very roughly received at Draya-in fact, in lieu of fire-crackers I had a volley of stones let off at me as I entered the town-I remained here for two days and gathered a good deal of interesting information bearing on both the country and the people, which it is not possible to convey here, and for which I must refer the reader to my complete report now in preparation.

On the 6th of September, I left Draya, and after an interesting journey of five days, up hill and down dale, reached the important town of Gartok, or Chiangka as it is called by the Chinese, the chief town of the province of Merkam belonging to Lh'asa. It is curious in this connection to note that vassal states, governed by officials sent by Lh'asa, are found scattered all over Tibet; the Nyarong or "arable lowlands of the Nya River," the Tsarong, Riwoché, and innumerable localities in southern and southeastern Tibet belong to this class.

These districts have frequently given in their allegiance to Lh'asa (or "tied their head," go-ta-wa, as they say) on account of similarity of religious beliefs. Sometimes, however, Lh'asa has got possession of them through intrigues or open aggression.

Gartok is an important center for the musk trade, which of late years has taken considerable extension. It has a native population of about seven hundred, besides some two hundred or three hundred lamas.

From a hundred to a hundred and thirty Chinese also reside here, all, or nearly all, of them having native wives.

Wheat, oats (wild?), and barley are grown here extensively, and the gardens supplied us with cabbages, turnips, and several other kinds of vegetables, one, called in Chinese o-sung, I found especially palatable. Cats, pigs, and fowls were seen in every house, and I was presented by the Chinese officer in command of the little garrison here with grapes, peaches, and apricots (wild varieties, I believe), brought here from the Rongmi, or "terres chaudes," as the French missionaries call them, some two days' distance down the River of Golden Sands (Chin-sha ho or Chin chiang ho).

For the first time in Tibet I saw house sparrows (cheuba, in Tibetan) at Gartok.

Leaving Gartok on the 12th of September, we reached Bat'ang on the 15th, and here the geographical portion of my work was at an end. The people between Gartok and Bat'ang are Chinesified to a considerable extent, and have also a few customs introduced among them from intercourse with the tribes living south of them, Lissus, Mosso, and others. Among other things borrowed from these tribes is a peculiar jew's-harp, carried by every woman of this region, and consisting of three different toned harps of bamboo; two or three women often play together, and to this accompaniment they dance a slow, shuffling step in which grace and beauty are conspicuously absent.

I remained at Bat'ang four days, and then proceeded to Lit'ang, which I reached on the 24th, and finally arrived at Ta-chien-lu, on the Chinese frontier, on the 2d of October. From this locality to Shanghai, where I arrived on the 1st of November, I followed the route taken by me in 1889, and for a description of which I must again refer the reader to the published account of my first journey.

Before closing this brief account of my journey I must mention that in July, when on the Dang ch'u (and even earlier, when in Namru), I heard that some foreigners had passed through the country some six months previous, coming, it was supposed, from the west. In August I again heard vaguely of these travellers, and on the 18th of that month, while camped near the Zé ch'u at Lah'a in Nar peihu, I was shown by a native a note he had received from a foreigner commanding an expedition which had passed through here several months before. It was signed Capt. Henry Bower, of the Seventeenth Bengal Cavalry, and he had come, I learned later, from Ladak by way of the deserts to the northwest of Tibet

Since then I have had the pleasure of meeting Capt. Bower in London, and we have been able to compare notes. From this comparison it results that after the 10th of August (I had then reached the I ch'u Valley), our routes were very nearly parallel till we arrived near Ch'amdo, after which point they were identical.

Finally, I would like to call attention to the rich fields of research China and its dependencies afford the explorer, be he geographer, botanist, geologist, or ethnologist. Though volumes enough to fill a goodly

library have been written about the Chinese Empire, a great deal remains to be done. Our geographical knowledge of China is still based on the surveys of the Jesuits, executed in the seventeenth century, to which a few itineraries have since been added. Pumpelly, Richthofen and a few others have only studied the geology of a part of this vast region; its botany is less well known perhaps than that of any other part of

FIG. 12.-a, b. Tibetan jews's-harp (K'a-pi); Bamboo. c, Bamboo case of same. the globe. Its ethnology, though it has been more or less studied by hundreds of writers, has never, as far as I know, been systematically treated, and the scientific study of the languages of China is only just begun.

Of the scientific results of my journey I will here say nothing; they will be submitted in the report which I am at present preparing, together with a route map on a scale of 16 miles to an inch, reduced from my original survey. The illustrations accompanying this paper are from photographs taken by me on the journey, and of which I secured some two hundred fairly good ones.

PROGRESS OF ASTRONOMY FOR 1891 AND 1892.

By WILLIAM C. WINLOCK.

A review of the progress of astronomy for the years 1879 and 1880 was contributed by Prof. E. S. Holden to the Smithsonian Report for 1880, and reviews for each succeeding year were continued by him in the annual reports of the Institution up to 1884; the reviews for 1885 and 1886, and for 1887-'88 and 1889-'90 were prepared by the present writer, the publication since 1886 being biennial instead of annual. The arrangement of the review for 1891-'92 is essentially the same as in previous years and, in its compilation as hitherto, notes in recent journals have been freely drawn upon without specific citation.

It should be borne in mind that the review is intended for those having a general interest in astronomy rather than for the professional astronomer who has access to a large working library. To the latter the bibliography appended may be found convenient as a reference, and will supplement the text in giving a general idea of recent publications on any special subject. Many very important papers are of such a nature that they do not lend themselves readily to condensation for the purposes of such a summary as the present.

Within the last few years many new aids have been provided to facilitate reference to the constantly-increasing volume of the literature of the subject. The most comprehensive of these is to be found in the Bulletin astronomique, published under the auspices of the Paris Observatory and the able editorship of M. Tisserand. In addition to extensive critical reviews of important memoirs, there is a brief summary of the contributions to other astronomical periodicals, and the whole is made easy of reference by an admirable index (wherein most journals are defective) at the close of the year, which, in fact, to a large extent, supplies a bibliography of astronomy for the year. The Journal of the British Astronomical Association contains a summary of current periodical literature, the value of which to the members is abundantly vouched for. The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific contains a great number of admirable reviews or notes, and this department is receiving increased attention in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The Observatory has perhaps the most complete notes, without an attempt at a systematic summary of current