The work promised by the Fund in the departments of natural history and geology still waits for want of means; though notes have been made on the occurrence of basalt, trap, hot springs, &c., and among the things sent home have been an occasional animal, a small collection of _Coleoptera_, a book of dried flowers from Moab, and some specimens of rock. In its zoology and botany, as well as in its human history and arts, Palestine has felt the influence of Africa, Asia and Europe; the heights of Lebanon and Hermon, the depths of Gennesareth and the Dead Sea, assist to make its natural history cosmopolitan. It is curious that the _Clarias_, a strange-looking fish of the Siluroid family, found by Tristram in the Lake of Galilee, and in one of the fountains near its shores, should be identical in species with a fish found in the Nile; thus far confirming Josephus, who says that the fountain of Capharnaum in Gennesareth produced a Nile fish, and on that account was thought to be a vein of the river of Egypt.[41] But the words of Linnæus are almost true to-day: 'We know more of the botany and zoology of farther India than we do of those of Palestine.' Of the geology we are in equal ignorance, although the depression of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea invites attention as being the most remarkable on the face of the globe, and constituting, in the opinion of Sir R. Murchison, the key to the entire geology of the district. Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Tristram, and a few other gentlemen, if sent out and supported for some years, would probably astonish us by the results of their investigations. In meteorology the Society has made a commencement, by sending out instruments and publishing tabular statements of barometrical readings, temperature, rainfall, &c., observed at Beyrout, Nazareth, Gaza, Jaffa, and in the Lebanon. With all this work on hand, they have also begun the exploration of the Tih--the Wilderness of the Wanderings--sending out Mr. E. H. Palmer, a most accomplished Arabic scholar, formerly of the Sinai Ordnance Survey, who appears to have made some discoveries, but whose full statement is not yet before us. We had intended to detail the difficulties under which the explorers have done their work, but the list is too long: counting every shade, from the laziness of the native workmen, to the whizzing of native bullets; from the thermometer at 110 degrees to attacks of fever and dysentery; from slips in scaling mountains, danger from falling stones, risk of choking in narrow aqueducts and sewers--we had noted not less than fifty instances.