Professor Macvane's Lecture.

Professor Macvane lectured last evening before a large audience in the Fogg Art Museum lecture room on "The Guiana Boundary Question." He began by describing the physical characteristics of the country. The coast for fifty miles inland is a low marshy country, suited for the cultivation of sugar. There it begins to slope up till it reaches at its highest point a height of 6000 feet above sea level.

The maps of South America, said the speaker, are some of them relevant to the subject in hand; others are irrelevant. Of the former there are four classes. The first class sets the boundary of Guiana at the Essequibo River; the others vary largely in their conclusions. Of the set which places the boundary at the Essequibo we have five maps-an American atlas (1796), a Paris map (1781), a London atlas, published the year of the cession of Guiana to England, a French geographer's map (1803), and a Caracas map of obscure and doubtful origin.

The next set of maps accepts a boundary starting at Cape Nassau. These were probably constructed on the theory that, although the Essequibo was the real boundary, geographers must represent facts as they exist. There are seventeen maps of this kind, many of them by men of established reputation.

The third class, consisting of four maps, represents the Waini River as the boundary; while the last and most important group places the boundary near the Barima River.

Professor Macvane then quoted at some length from the writings of various men of different nationalities on the subject. He showed the many difficulties which will beset the United States commission on account of the great differences in spelling the names of important places and rivers by various authors. All in all, he thought the commissioners would find, when they began to investigate, that they had no easy task.