Abstract
PROF. H. F. OSBORN, curator of vertebrate palæontology in the American University of Natural History, New York, contributes to the Century Magazine a popular account of prehistoric quadrupeds found in the Rockies during the past few years, and to be exhibited to the public at that museum in October. Interest in his description is greatly increased by nine remarkably fine illustrations (reproduced from water-colour drawings by Mr. Charles Knight), designed to give an idea of the animals as they probably appeared in life in their natural surroundings. Another interesting article in the Century is made up of extracts from the journals of the late Mr. E. J. Glave, whose journey to the Livingstone Tree had such a melancholy termination. On July 8, 1894, Mr. Glave reached the tree beneath which Dr. Livingstone's heart is buried. Jacob Wainwright, the Nassick boy who read the burial service, cut on the tree the words: “Dr. Livingstone, May 4, 1873. Yazuza, Mniasere, Vchopere.” The body was roughly embalmed and carried to Bagamoyo, on the coast opposite Zanzibar, afterwards to be taken to England and buried in Westminster Abbey. As to the tree, Mr. Glave wrote in his journal: “Although done twenty years ago, the inscription is in a splendid state of preservation. The tree shows no disfigurement, and, moreover, the carving is not on the bark but on the grain of the tree itself. It is a hardwood tree, three feet in diameter at the base; at thirty feet it throws out large branches; its top is a thick mass of foliage. When Livingstone died the heart and other viscera were buried beneath this tree, and the bark was cleared off for a space of two and a half feet square; in this space Jacob Wainwright (whose account my discovery verifies to the letter) carved the inscription with no dunce's hand, the letters being well-shaped and bold. The tree is situated at the edge of the grass plain, and is very conspicuous, being the largest tree in the neighbourhood. It is about five miles south south-west from the present site of the village of Karonga Nzofu, an important Bisa chief, whose father was a friend of Livingstone. Chitambo's is now ten miles away. It was originally near the tree; in fact, Livingstone died a few minutes' walk from the old village of Chitambo.” The tablet which Mrs. Bruce—the daughter of Livingstone—sent out by Captain Bia and Lieut. Franqui to commemorate the explorer's death, was put up by them eight miles from the spot where he died, and was afterwards carried off by the chief of a slave caravan.
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Science in the Magazines. Nature 54, 454 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/054454a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/054454a0