Ar a book sale at Glasgow last week the following prices were obtained:-Burns's MS. of "Holy Willie's Prayer," £40; Ruskin's Modern Painters, £20 10s.; Hamerton's Etching and Etchers, £19 5s.; Beckford's Vathek, £11; Douglas's Baronage, £11 5s.; the first edition of Shelley's Queen Mab, £16 16s.; of Milton's Paradise Lost, £11; of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, £11; of Byron's Hours of Idleness, £10 10s.; of Dickens's Sketches by Boz, £7 12s. 6d.; of Tennyson's Poems (1830), £5 10s.; of Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, £3 2s. 6d.; Don Quixote with Smirke's illustrations, £9; a perfect copy of The Day, £5; the first Edinburgh edition of Burns, £4; twenty of Collier's Tracts, £10; Bewick's Birds, £4 17s. 6d. Ar the annual meeting of the Faculty of Advocates held last week, the Report of the Keeper of the library was submitted. The total number of separate pieces received during 1883 was 21,269, being an increase of 2,558 on the previous year. The grand total was thus classified-volumes, through London agent 4,800, direct from publishers 460, by purchase or presentation 159; pamphlets, 2,453; parts of periodicals, 10,703; pieces of music, 2,256; maps, 306. The number of volumes issued to readers was 85,621; of MSS., 558. The expenditure on binding was £242. The chief work undertaken during the year was the testing of the books on the shelves by the Catalogue, and the completion of a duplicate copy of the MS. slip catalogue of accessions. AMONG the additions to the Philadelphia public library during the past six months we notice a complete set of the Rolls series; the publications of the Early-English Text and the New Shakspere Societies; the Catalogue of the Bodleian Library; and a copy of the first edition of Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's Don John of Austria. THE Nation records an amusing incident at a book sale at New York. The owner of the collection gave 5,000 dollars (£1,000) to ten several public libraries to be spent at the sale. The natural result was that the libraries bid against one another, and many of the books were run up to nearly double their market price. The chief benefit, therefore, would seem to have accrued to the auctioneer. THE Bibliothèque nationale has recently made a statistical inventory of its contents. Of printed books it contains 2,500,000; of MSS., 92,000; of medals and coins, 144,000; of prints, &c., more than two millions, kept in 14,500 volumes and 4,000 portfolios; in the "Galerie de la Réserve" are preserved 80,000 of the most precious volumes; the total number of readers in 1883 was 70,000, as compared with only 24,000 fifteen years earlier. AMERICAN JOTTINGS. THE subject of international copyright is again being taken up in America, from which country the initiative must, of course, come. Mr. Dorsheimer, of New York, has introduced a Bill into the House of Representatives providing that, when any foreign Government shall accord to American authors the same rights that native authors enjoy, the Executive of the United States may, by proclamation, extend to the authors of that foreign Government the benefit of the American law, restricted, however, to a term of twenty-five (instead of forty-two) years. Nothing is said about the publishers' point of view-i.e., domestic manufacture; but the Nation suggests that that may well be left to the operation of the ordinary tariff. THE English Publishing Company has been incorporated at New York for the purpose of printing, by arrangement with the English proprietors, American editions of the Fortnightly, Nineteenth Century, and Contemporary, to appear simultaneously with their issue in England. The price for a single number will be forty cents (1s. 8d.), and the annual subscription for all three will be only twelve dollars (£2 8s.). The corresponding price in England is £4 10s. business is at Boston, are the publishers of a MESSRS. OSGOOD, whose principal place of sort of official account of the State of New York, which is to be brought out with unusual sumptuousness. The work will consist of three volumes quarto, illustrated with 487 full-page plates, and bound in morocco, with satin lining, &c. The edition will be limited to 500 copies, at the price of 400 dollars each (£80). A sketch of the history of the State will be given from the beginning of the colonial period to the present time; also a geological survey. But the main object of the work is to give an exhaustive description of the various public and semi-public institutions-the legislature, judicial bench, canals, railroads, banks, schools, agriculture, &c. The illustrations will be partly of buildings and scenery (as to which we may call to mind that New York includes not only the Adirondacks, but also one side of Niagara), partly portraits. The full title of the work is The Public Service of the State of New York. THE New York Critic says:"The past year has not been marked by the publication of many important new books while the list of new editions of old books has been larger than usual. The books that have sold the best in the shops have been the very cheap and the very dear." We fancy that the experience of the trade in England is to the same effect. EVANGELINUS APOSTOLIDES SOPHOCLES, Professor of Greek at Harvard, who died on December 17, was in many respects a remarkable man. Born in Thessaly, at a village on the slope of Mount Pelion, in about the year 1807, he was educated in the monastery on Mount Sinai; he migrated to America in 1829, and was connected with Harvard as tutor and professor since 1842. His chief published works are a Greek Grammar (1838), a Grammar of Romaic (1842), and a Greek Lexicon of the The Roman and Byzantine periods (1870). simple nature of the man, and the eccentricity of his habits, are well described in an article in the Nation of January 3. A BOSTON paper publishes an account of the first draft of Longfellow's "Excelsior," which is preserved in the library of Harvard College. Among the rejected lines we note "A youth who bore a pearl of price" and "A tear was in his pale blue eye." AT the end of December a meeting was held at Columbia College of professors of modern languages with the view of founding a national association of modern philology (including English) in American colleges and universities. A resolution was passed that the " 'primary aims of instruction in the modern languages should be literary culture, philological scholarship, and linguistic discipline, but that oral practice is desirable as an auxiliary." A NEW YORK printer boasts to have turned out a translation of Sarah Barnum within fortyeight hours after a single copy of the French original was received in America. An American edition of the Letters of Mrs. Carlyle was produced last year by the same firm ready for sale within four days. THE Boston Literary World for December 29 contains a "General Survey of the World's Literature in 1883," extending to eighteen closely printed pages. ORIGINAL VERSE. LIGHT AND LOVE. Ir light should strike through every darkened place, How many a rankling sore its touch would heal, WALTER W. SKEAT. MAGAZINES AND REVIEWS. THE current number of Mind contains one or two articles of exceptional interest. Perhaps the most original one is that entitled "On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology,' by Prof. W. James. The writer charges psychologists generally with looking at mind as though it were made up of a series of rounded-off, discontinuous "states," ideas, &c., whereas in reality it is a continuous stream, in which, besides those "substantive parts which arrest special attention, are numerous "transitive parts." These last are important as determining the peculiar colourings of feeling attaching to the substantive parts. The same thought is a different mental state according to its fugitive psychical antecedents and accompaniments, just as one and the same musical note is a different impression in different tunes. The writer seeks to give a philosophical turn to this psychological conception by extending Mr. Spencer's idea of "feelings of relation.""It is a peculiarity of the stream [of consciousness] that its several parts are susceptible of becoming objects for each other." This truth, according to the author, does away with the need of supposing, as the late Prof. Green supposed, that an active mental principle, outside the feelings themselves, somehow brings them together-a supposition which is beset with difficulties. The same truth is also ingeniously applied to the vexed question of Nominalism and Conceptualism. What a general name calls up in the mind, says Prof. James, is an image (individual or generic) which is felt to be representative of many others. The article is written in a telling and even a brilliant style, and cannot fail to attract the notice of all concerned in psychology. Another able article is on "Green's Metaphysics of Knowledge," by Mr. A. J. Balfour. The essayist begins by observing that Prof. Green is the first of that band of English writers which he somewhat confusingly calls the Neo-Kantians who has left the exposition and criticism of other thinkers' ideas and undertaken a systematic presentment of his own. The argument of the article, which illustrates the author's wellknown ability in seizing central or fundamental ideas and dealing directly with them, aims at showing that the new attempt to eliminate Kant's "Things-in-themselves," and to resolve the whole of experience into the work of the mind, is so far a failure, and is considerably discredited by a number of fundamental inconsistencies. Perhaps the most successful part of what is throughout a forcible argument is the refutation of Green's theory that knowledge (in the individual consciousness) is out of time. The critic seems perfectly right in finding in Green a deep vein of mysticism, and his closing remarks on the affinity of Green's thought to Berkeley's are particularly happy. What may be called the Kantian tendency in philosophy is severely dealt with in this number. In addition to the two articles just referred to, Mr. Shad worth H. Hodgson's address before the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society on "The Metaphysical Method in Philosophy" handles the method of Kant and his followers somewhat roughly. The writer pleads this time with unexpected force and vivacity of manner for the plan of setting out in philosophic enquiry with an analytical inspection of experience from within, instead of trying to get outside of it and deduce it from certain assumptions. A noteworthy exception to the general anti-Kantian strain of this number of Mindis to be found in a careful essay by Mr. J. S. Haldane on "Life and Mechanism," which seeks to demonstrate the inadequacy of the category of causation in the region of organic phenomena, and the necessity of calling in that of "reciprocity." The reader will note with pleasure the addition of a section devoted to Research along with Discussion. Two excellent contributions to psychological investigation are supplied in the present number -one on "Bilateral Asymmetry of Function," by two workers in the Psycho-physical Laboratory in the Johns Hopkins University, and one on 66 The Stages of Hypnotism," by Mr. E. Gurney. The juxtaposition of the work of an organised band of investigators in America and of an isolated individual in England naturally suggests the question, Why cannot we have a psycho-physical laboratory in this country? Nothing would tend so much to raise the position of psychology in the world of science, and, we may add, to improve the value of such a record of scientific progress as Mind aims at becoming. Perhaps the University of Cambridge may soon see its way, in addition to its other recent improvements, to the establishment of such a scientific workshop, under, let us say, the able conduct of Mr. James Ward. con Le Livre for January contains but two articles in its first part. Both are good; and it would probably always be wise for M. Uzanne, considering the increasing pressure of his " temporary" matter, to make few and good the rule of his retrospective papers. The first (signed "Antoine Fureteur," which may or may not be a pseudonym) is a really capital cento of extracts from old étrennes books, with an agreeable frontispiece. The second is an article on Lamennais, by M. E. Forgues, dealing chiefly with its subject's taste in books, his range of reading, and so forth. This has some letters of interest and a full-page portrait after Ary Scheffer, which is very characteristic. It would have been curious to contrast it-its date is 1848-with a representation of the great Abbé in his tonsured condition. SELECTED FOREIGN BOOKS. GENERAL LITERATURE. BARDT, F. Der Bracteatenfund v. Gross-Briesen. Berlin: Weyl. 2 M. 50 Pr BAZIRE. E. Manet. Paris: Quantin. 10 fr. BLOWITZ, M. de. Une Course à Constantinople. Paris: Plon. 3 fr. 50 c. BOISGOBEY, F. du. Margot la Balafrée. 6 fr. Paris: Plon. DU BOIS-REYMOND, E. Friedrich II in englischen Urtheilen. Darwin u Kopernicus. Die HumboldtDenkmäler vor der Berliner Universität. 3 Reden. Leipzig: Veit. 2 M. EUDEL. P. L'Hôtel Dronot et la Curiosité en 1883. Paris: Charpentier. 3 fr. 50 c. FERRAND, J. Les Pays libres: leur Organisation et leur Education d'après la Législation comparée. Paris: Cotillon. 3 fr. 50 c. FLAUBERT, G., Lettres de, à George Sand. Paris: Charpentier. 3 fr. 50 c. FRAGMENTE ans deutschen Lustspielen gesammelt u. mit Erläuterungen versehen v. G. D. Deelman. Amsterdam: Sikken. 1 fl. 50 e HOFFMANN, P. Studien zu Leon Battista Albertis zehn Büchern. De re aedificatoria. Leipzig: Hinrichs. 1 M. ciano. Stuttgart: Wittwer. 9 M. LAMBERT, A. Madonna di San Biagio près MontepulBâtie par A. di Sau Gallo de 1518 à 1525. LECOEUR, J. Esquisses du Boccage normand. Paris: MAUPAS, M. de. Mémoires sur le Second Empire. MEYER, A. Die Münzen der Stadt Dortmund. Berlin: Stargardt. 9 M. Maisonneuve. 7 tr. 50 c. Paris: Dentu. 8 fr. POTTIER, E. Etude sur les Lécythes blancs attiques à 3 fr. 50 c. moderne.] Paris: Maisonneuve. 12 fr. ZOLA, E. La 3 fr. 50 c. DE KOE, S. S. Johannes. BONVALOT, E. THEOLOGY. De conjecturaal-critiek en het naar Kemink & Zoon. 3 fl. 75 c. HISTORY. [JAN. 26, 1884.-No. 612. spare to give to the work of another, They were entrusted to the Royal Society for safe keeping. Now, for some years past a strange and not very clearly expressed MS. has been travelling about England from hand to hand. It relates to the connexion between the laws of mental development and those of vegetable growth, and Joie de Vivre. Paris: Charpentier. is the work of a gentleman named Benjamin Betts, who holds some post in the Government Survey Office, Auckland. Mr. Betts emigrated so young and has lived so much alone that he is unable to make himself intelligible or to see why others cannot understand him; but I know of no one who has read much of the MS. without becoming convinced that he has something of value to teach, nor can anyone examine his diagrams without perceiving that he has caught some true secret of growth-laws. I am not sufficiently versed in the higher mathematics either to give Mr. Betts the help which he needs in bringing his philosophy into harmony with accepted methods of study, or to read my husband's later MSS. But I know enough of the nature of my husband's investigations to venture to predict that a comparison of the two sets of MS. would throw light on both. Paris: Plon. 4 fr. lements. Paris: Picard. 12 fr. Hague: Nijhoff. 9s. Le Tiers Etat d'après la Charte de Beaumont et ses Filiales. DE LA GRAVIERE, Jurien. Les Campagnes d'Alexandre. Paris: Picard. 12 fr. La Conquête de l'Inde et le Voyage de Néarque. FLAMMERMONT. J. Le Chancelier Maupeon et les ParFRIESCHE stadrechten. Uitg. d. A. Telting. The LOEWENFELD, R. Lukasz Gornicki. Sein Leben u. seine Werke. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte d. HuLUCHAIRE. A. Histoire des Institutions monarchiques de la France sous les premiers Capétiens (987-1180). Paris: Picard. 15 fr. MIDDELEEUWSCHE rechtsbronnen der stad Utrecht. Uitg. d. S. Muller. The Hague: Nijhoff. 25s. MOLLERUP, W. Dänemark's Beziehungen zu Livland vom Verkauf Estland's bis zur Auflösung d. OrdensURKUNDENBUCH der evangelischen Landeskirche A. B. staats (1346-1561). Berlin: Siemenroth. 3 M. 60 Pf. in Siebenbürgen. 2. Thl. Hermannstadt: Michaelis. manismus in Polen. Breslau: Koebner. 4 M. 50 Pf. 4 M. 80 Pf. PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. wirthschaft. Berlin: Springer. 6 M. BRETFELD, H. v. Das Versuchswesen auf dem Gebiete der Pflanzenphysiologie m. Bezug auf die LandDARWIN, Charles, u seine Lehre. Aphorismen. gesammelt aus Darwin's eigenen Schriften u. Werken seiner Vorgänger u. Zeitgenossen. Leipzig: Thomas. 3 M. 60 Pf. DETMER, W. Pflanzenphysiologische Untersuchungen üb. Fermentbildung u. fermentative Processe. Jena: Fischer. 1 M. 20 Pf. not only to call attention to a lonely thinker My object in making this communication is struggling against difficulties, of the nature and extent of which he himself is hardly aware, and to tell my husband's followers of a clue by which they may find their way to the meaning of his MSS. I wish also to protest beforehand against any possible annoyance to Mr. Betts or the non-mathematical students of his philosophy, should they happen inadvertently to bring forward as original any fragment of truth which is already expressed in mathe FROMMANN, C. Untersuchungen üb. Struktur, Lebens-matical language in my husband's published erscheinungen u. Reaktionen thierischer u. pflanz- works. Mr. Betts is not a mathematician; he licher Zellen. Jena: Fischer. 9 M. LIEBMANN, O. Die Klimax der Theorieen, Strass- sees nature as no mathematician can (for “on a burg: Trübner. 2 M. 50 Pf. LUDWIG FERDINAND PRINZ V. BAYERN, zur Anatomie les défauts de ses qualités"). The two thinkers der Zunge. Eine vergleichend anatomische Studie. are rather necessary complements to each other München: Literarisch-artist. Anstalt. 60 M. than possible rivals; and, between two men so SPINOZA, Bened. de. Opera. Recogn. J. v. Vloten et J. P. N. Land. Vol. II. The Hague: Nijhoff. £1. generous, so disinterested, so devoted to the STAUDINGER, F. Noumena. Die "transcendentalen cause of Truth, no rivalry is conceivable. Grundgedanken u die "Widerlegung d. Idealismus " Darmstadt: Brill. 4 M. MARY BOOLE. VOECHTING, H. Ueb. Organbildung im Pflanzenreich. WEISMANN, A. 2. Thl. Bonn: Strauss. 8 M. Ueb. Leben u. Tod. Eine biolog. Untersuchg. Jena: Fischer. 2 M. WOELFLER, A. Ueb. die Entwickelung u. den Bau d. Kropfes. Berlin: Hirschwald. 22 M. PHILOLOGY, ETC. FATH, F. Did Lieder d. Castellans v. Coucy nach sämmtl. Handschriften kritisch bearb. Heidelberg: Weiss. 1 M. 80 Pf. FRITZE, L. Pantschatantra. Aus dem Sanskrit neu übers. Leipzig: Schulze. 6 M. A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PLAN OF CARTAGENA. Admiralty, Whitehall: Jan. 14, 1884. A very interesting plan of Cartagena at the has been found here among a collection of MS. time of its capture by Sir Francis Drake in 1586 plans and of the West Indies dating, maps with this exception, from the eighteenth GOLDZIHER, J. Die Zahiriten, ihr Lehrsystem u. ihre century. I do not think it can have been de Geschichte. Beitrag zur Geschichte der muhammedan. Theologie. Leipzig: Schulze. 12 M. LUFBKE, H. Observationes criticae in historiam veteris Graecorum comoediae. Berlin: Mayer & Müller. 1 M 20 Pf. MINHADJ AT-TALIBIN. Le Guide des zélés croyants. deutsches Gedicht d. 14. Jahrh. Dorpat. 3 M. CORRESPONDENCE. THE LATE PROF. BOOLE AND MR. BENJAMIN 103 Seymour Place. Bryanston Square: Will you allow me to make in the ACADEMY a statement which may be of interest to some students of philosophy? My husband, the late Prof. Boole, often told me that the perception of a connexion between logic and mathematics had come, as it were, accidentally to him while he was gathering materials for a work on the Philosophy of Intuition. At his death all his unpublished MSS. were shown to several mathematicians of note, who pronounced that to decipher them would require more time than anyone could scribed before; and, in order to ascertain whether this is correct, the following brief description is subjoined: The plan is painted on vellum which originally must have been quite thirty-six inches by twenty-five inches, but the right side has been cut and rounded somewhat, though not in any way spoiling the plan itself. At the top is a blue scroll containing the word Cartagena" in gold letters, while at the bottom are two cartouches, that on the left green, with gilt scroll-work 66 "This Towne of Cartagena was taken the ith of februarie 1586 by the nomber of 900 men under the Conduction of Capten Christopher Carleill and the rest of the principale officers, in the wa Towne we gott some 80 peeces of Brasse Ordinnaunce." These words are in gold letters. The cartouche on the right is coloured pink, and has in ink, "Johannes Baptista me fecit an? 1586." Between these, but not in the middle line of the plan, are the points of the compass, coloured; and in a vacant space on the left, formed by the trending of the coast, is a coat of arms, unfinished as regards the colouring, with E. B. in gilt underneath the shield. The main body of the fleet is represented, with sails set and flags flying, at sea, off Cartagena, sailing westward. A number of empty boats, with three larger vessels, are at anchor off "the Cienaga" of Hakluyt, and a body of armed men are approaching the city by the sandy spit, on which is an evident representation of the barricado described by Cates. The two Spanish gallies also mentioned by him are depicted in the inner bay. The harbour entrance has the chain across it shown, with three pinnaces and a large vessel making an attempt on the fort there. The sandy spits are coloured dark brown, while the coast lines, wooded and marshy ground, and hill country are coloured green. The town itself is clearly shown, but the sails and flags of the ships have a rough, blurred look. Dirt and dust have alone disfigured the plan. The interest of this Drake relic may, perhaps, lead to its history being solved through the medium of the ACADEMY. GEORGE F. HOOPER. THE MABINOGI OF TALIESIN. Mr. Skene, in his Introduction to the Four D. SILVAN EVANS. GREEK MYTHS. Settrington: Jan. 21, 1884. The value of Mr. Lang's Novum Organum as an instrument of scientific research can readily be tested. He has only to name some halfdozen Greek myths which the orthodox or historic method (that of Bréal and Kuhn) has failed to explain, but of which recognised solutions have been supplied, in the first instance, by what, for want of a better name, may be provisionally designated as the Hottentotic heresy. If this cannot be done, Mr. Brown may fairly continue to contend that Mr. Lang's explanations explain nothing; if it can, Sir George Cox will doubtless be ready to admit that Mr. Lang's method can no longer be described as "no method at all." But in any case Mr. Bradley's sober dictum must standnamely, that "the evidence yielded by historically known mythologies cannot reasonably be set aside in favour of presumptions based on a miscellaneous study of savage myths." Mr. Lang, having somewhat scornfully rejected my explanation of the Cronus myth, will, I fear, be unable to use the strongest case 5 Willow Road, Hampstead: Jan. 15, 1884. The line which Prof. Hales quotes from Chaucer is not to the point. "To bear a thing heavily, sorely, &c.," is a very different expression from "to bear a person hard." Is Prof. Hales' interpretation supported by classical usage? "Graviter ferre aliquid" is ordinary Latin; but I should be very much surprised to meet "graviter ferre aliquem." A. H. BULLEN. Cambridge: Jan. 13, 1884. An old " equestrian rhyme which used to Up the hill spare me, KRONOS AND HEAVENLY STONES. Edinburgh: Jan. 21, 1884. As Dr. Isaac Taylor lays some stress upon the heavenly origin of the sacred stones of Delphi and Troy, and the images of Ephesus and Tauris, &c., in his reply to Mr. Lang in the ACADEMY of January 12 (which I have only seen to-day), it seems advisable to state that this idea of the sacred objects falling from heaven is quite a European misapprehension of the pious fiction of Eastern worshippers. An Indian or Eastern public are of course told that their sacred Linga and Yoni emblems-"Palladiums "-are heaven-born, or fell from heaven and stuck fast without human intervention when they fell, or were bestowed on some very special occasion by a god on a man of rare holiness, &c., &c. ; but no initiated or educated person is supposed to believe this, although every pious man must repeat it, and take no notice of a little out-of-the-way shop or cell where the images or Lares and Penates are manufactured. If a stone or tree stump can be found like the natural object, and " which no tool has been raised,' so much the better; but, failing this, the image or symbol is secretly prepared, and a legend and miracle got up to account for the deity or his emblem. After the miraculous events and a pompous consecration, the image or stone-whether the great Jovine column, which orthodoxly stood in front of the Parvatian Cave of Delphi, or the small Linga in the Trojan ark-is universally TUESDAY, 3p.m. Royal Institution: "Scenery esteemed a genuine gift from heaven, but never then an aerolite or anything natural. on have examined some thousands, and even 66 Is not the phrase 'bearing-rein" a further W. T. LENDrum. APPOINTMENTS FOR NEXT WEEK. MONDAY, Jan. 28,5 p.m. London Institution: "Results obtained by the Society for Psychical Research," by Prof. H. Sidgwick. 7 p.m. Actuaries: "A Method for Determining the Extra Premiums to be Charged in Respect of Two-Life Assurances," by Mr. Gerald H. Ryan. 8 p.m. Society of Arts: Cantor Lecture, "Recent Improvements in Photo-Mechanical Printing Methods," I., by Mr. Thomas Bolas. 8.30 p.m. Geographical: "Three Months' Exploration in the Tenimber Islands, Timor Laut," by Mr. H. O. Forbes; "Ascent of the Crater of Ambrym Island, New Hebrides," by Lieut. Beresford and Mr. Luther. of the British Isles." I., by Dr. A. Geikie. 8 p.m. Society of Arts: "Canada as it will appear to the British Association in 1584," by Mr. Joseph G. Colmer. 8 p.m. Civil Engineers: "The Adoption of Standard Forms of Test-Pieces for Bars and Plates," by Mr. Hackney. WEDNESDAY, Jan. 30, 8 p.m. Society of Arts: "Coal 7 p.m. London Institution: "The Greatest of the Old English Poets," by the Rev. S. A. Brooke, 8 p.m. Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts: "Ancient and Modern Music." with Selections illustrating the Progress of Music from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century, by Mr. Brindley Richards, 8 p.m. Telegraph Engineers: "A System of Electric Fire Alarms," illustrated with Diagrams and Apparatus, by Mr. Edward Bright. FRIDAY, Feb. 1, 7 p.m. Civil Engineers: "Some Elementary Electrical Notes," by Mr. Edgar smart. Philological: "The Dialects of Norway," by Mr. Henry Sweet. 8 p.m. 9 p.m. Royal Institution: "Rajah Rammohun SATURDAY, Feb. 2, 8 p.m. Royal Institution: "Life Roy," by Prof. Max Müller. and Literature under Charles I.," III., by Prof. Henry Morley. SCIENCE. A Concise Dictionary, English-Persian. Together with a Simplified Grammar of the Persian Language. By E. H. Palmer. (Trübner.) WITHIN recent years some advance has been made in Persian lexicography; and, though the science is still in its youth, we have now a few guides on which some dependence can be placed for practical purposes. The latest efforts do not, indeed, assume the imposing proportions of some of their stately predecessors; but they are at least conducted with a little regard to preciseness and accuracy, and not on the plan of pouring in under each heading a deluge of words more or less synonymous, in the hope that the seeker, by some rare combination of good fortune and a miraculous faculty of discrimination yet unexplained, may, in the choice so liberally offered, wade through to something to suit his particular requirements. Persian scholars have begun to see the value and importance of original research, and the literature of lexicography has recently been enriched with certain works which do great credit to their compilers in the accurate and idiomatic renderings which they offer. Bergé's little dictionary, which appeared in 1868, and other practical works by French scholars who had actually resided in Persia have, I think, done much to further this tendency and to draw attention more particularly to the Persian of Persia itself. In 1876 appeared Prof. Palmer's Concise Dictionary, Persian-English, which, as the Preface says, was chiefly intended for the use of travellers and others in Persia. The companion volume, English-Persian, now under review, is somewhat smaller, but contains about 10,000 headings derived in great part from the preceding portion. The work is admirably calculated for the use of travellers, the number of words being amply sufficient for their every-day require ments, and the choice most carefully and judiciously made. Of course it must happen that in some cases the word sought for will not be found, but a synonym may generally be thought of to aid in supplying the want. A notable feature of the work, resulting in the economy of space and expense and the avoidance of much useless repetition, is the omission of the English verb where it can be supplied from a corresponding substantive or participle given, and the indication by initials of the Persian auxiliary required to make up the equivalent Persian compound verb. Some examples will make this clear :Impulse, tahrik (d.)—i.e., the substantive impulse is to be translated by tahrik; the corresponding verb by tahrik dadan. Impoverished, mufkar (sh.); muhtáj (8.)—i.e., impoverished is to be rendered by mufkar or muhtáj; to become impoverished, by mufkar shudan; to make impoverished, to impoverish, by muhtáj sákhtan. In one respect, perhaps, there is a slight want of consistency in the plan of the work, which, though entitled a dictionary, partakes in some degree of the character of a vocabulary, an ambiguous English word being sometimes rendered without an explanation of the sense in which it is taken. This remark applies also to those verbs which are not discriminated as transitive or intransitive. Such instances, however, are not numerous, and they detract but little from the value of a work the want of which has been greatly felt by travellers in Persia and others desirous of gaining some practical knowledge of the language. The principal regret of Persian scholars will be that Prof. Palmer was not able to spare more time from his other avocations to cultivate a field which his pre-eminent acquirements would have rendered so fertile. No one, in fact, was better qualified for the work of Persian lexicography than Prof. Palmer, both The work left incomplete has been supple- Allusion having been made to the practical in the science. To the Dictionary is prefixed Prof. Palmer's Simplified Persian Grammar, which contains in a small compass all the most necessary rules of the language, explained in a style so characteristically clear and plain as to facilitate admirably their acquisition. Under the heading of numerals, however, 1881 is an unhappy example of the figures "being written from left to right as with us, and combined in the same way as our own.' In connexion with this article, however, it may suggest itself that in the fact of the Sanskrit character reading from left to right. there is perhaps an explanation of the strange anomaly, which, in point of fact, does exist, in the use in Persian of the so-called C. E. WILSON. Arabic numerals. SOME BOOKS ON ROMAN HISTORY. Etude sur le De Moribus Germanorum. Par Ferd. Brunot. (Paris: Picard.) Prof. Brunot's theory on the Germany of Tacitus is, at all events, not like other theories of its origin use Ritter's expression. It is very simple. It and nature, subtilius quam_verius excogitatae, to answers the question, What is this work? by saying, This is not a work; it is a part of one: it is a fragment of the Histories, the introduction to Tacitus' account of the campaign of Domitianus on the Danube. In support of this view, already held by Riese and Ritter, there is not much positive evidence to be adduced. It is known that Tacitus did treat in detail the that he introduced digressions to vary the events of the period in question. It is observed monotony of an unbroken narrative, especially in the Histories, as about Paphos (H. 2.3), Serapis (H. 4.83), or Judaea: and the plan or arrangement is found to be identical in each of the three descriptions of Rome's enemies which, if the view be adopted, would admit of comparison-the account of Judaea, the Agricola, and the Germany. The name De Moribus Germanorum may be suspected to be drawn from chap. 27, and not to be of the author's own choice. But this view rests, perhaps, most on the failure of other views. The treatise cannot be an ideal sketch, a satire on Rome, because the author admits such drawbacks into his picture. Nor is it, as Passow thought, the Cassandra-warning of an alarmed patriot; for fall of Rome: and even what he might have no one in Tacitus' time did, or could, foresee the foreseen he overlooked"la révolution religieuse. Nor, again, was it written to recommend a policy of conquest against Germany; for, though Tacitus would have approved such a policy, indications of his approval are in the Annals and Histories, not in the Germany. That composition is simply an instructive digression. Tacitus did not mean it to edify or advise, but only to instruct, readers. "Ce n'est pas un livre de morale, mais un livre moral." It will be seen that the theory suffers from a not uncommon want, a want of proof. Plausible it is, and ingenious. It enables us to coordinate various utterances of Tacitus, and to have the pleasure of reading some of them from a new point of view. But it must not be taken MS. of the Histories, or a new MS. of the for certain. Hardly anything but a complete Germany containing the statement that it was extracted (as Prof. Brunot believes) from the full work by a German monk, could prove it for us. Prof. Brunot has an acute and (so far as we know) novel reading for Germ. chap. 33. The word urguentibus has always been found hard to translate, and the MSS. differ a little about it. He urges from their forms that the archetype must have had vegentibus, standing just a line after duretve gentibus. It is, therefore, at least possible that it is a mere repetition, and the passage will read well without it: quando imperii fatis nihil praestare majus fortuna potest quam hostium discordiam. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Rom's. Von Dr. J. E. Kuntze. (Williams & Norgate.) Not an introduction to a larger work, but an independent treatise, Dr. Kuntze's Prolegomena will be found an interesting and vigorous piece of writing. Whether its philology and its SCIENCE NOTES. method of treating the fundamental ideas of in good health, and at present engaged in re- Moderne Quellenforscher und antike Geschichtschreiber. Von Dr. L. O. Bröcker. (Innsbruck.) Dr. Brocker's pamphlet, without being always convincing, cannot fail to be useful in his own Country in recalling the speculative investigators of the "sources " of ancient historians to a sense of caution, and, in short, in preventing them from getting on too fast. He opens what he has to say with a smart little attack on Nissen, pointing out that, while Nissen laid down as the fundamental rule (Grundgesetz) of the classical compilers the practice of simply transcribing their authorities, he very seriously modified this statement afterwards in the direction of admitting on the one hand a working-up, and on the other hand a verifying, of these authorities to have been practised by those who used them. Dr. Brocker makes it his business to show the antenableness of Nissen's dogma, at least in the first form; and he has for a second object the task of proving modern criticism in such matters to be less sharp-sighted and more fallible than it supposes itself. This he tries to do in certain definite cases; and he will find, in England at least, a friendly audience when he reminds us of the uncertainty of the conclusions of many a Contemporary" Quellenforschung." Ueber die Heimat der Prätorianer. Von Dr. Oscar Bohn. This seems a careful little piece of work, though it leaves us in some doubt 18 to what the author wishes to prove. Dr. Bohn tries to trace out the national origin of as many members as possible of the praetorian guard of Rome. As he remarks, the enquiry has a bearing upon that "interessanteste Problem," the extent to which the several provinces were Bomanised, although this particular kind of probable evidence is, so far as we remember, passed over by Budinszky in Es Ausbreitung der lateinischen Sprache. Dr. Bohn's pamphlet is one more example of the curious and unexpected information which may be dug out of the Corpus of Inscriptions. He thinks that his collection of nationalities, so far as it goes, does not bear out-or, at least, does not illustrate the growing depopulation of Italy, for the per-centage of provincials in the guard does not greatly increase with time. F. T. RICHARDS. MR. FRANK E. BEDDARD has been selected with English." Prof. Postgate is also lecturing this term at Cambridge on "Latin Grammar and on "Greek Grammar." AMONG the other lectures this term at Cam bridge, we may mention those of Prof. Cowell on Delbrück's Selected Hymns from the Rigveda, on Sayana's Introduction to the Rigveda, the Lalitavistara, the Pali Jatakas, the Shah-namah, and the Tarikh-i Badauni; those of Prof. Wright on Arabic Grammar, Arabic Poetry, and Syriac; and those of Prof. Robertson Smith on the Kor'ân. des Langues orientales vivantes the Académie For the two vacant chairs in the Ecole spéciale des Inscriptions has nominated M. Houdas in Arabic and M. Carrière in Armenian. NEW editions of Prof. Tiele's Outlines of the History of Religion and of Dr. Edkins's Religion in China will be issued immediately in Messrs. Trübner's "Oriental Series.” DR. NORREEN, of Upsala, has written a short Grammar of Old Norse for the German series of Germanic Grammars, one of which is Sievers' Anglo-Saxon Grammar. PROF. ARTHUR LUDWICH, of Königsberg, purposes to publish with Teubner, of Leipzig, an elaborate work upon Aristarchus's recension of the text of Homer as preserved in the Fragments of Didymos. DR. ARCHIBALD GEIKIE will give the first of a course of five lectures at the Royal Institution on British Isles" on Tuesday next, January 29. "The Origin of the Scenery of the UNDER the title of The Sagacity and Morality of Plants: a Sketch of the Life and Conduct of the Vegetable Kingdom, Dr. J. E. Taylor has THE last number of Trübner's Oriental Record written a work, to be published shortly by contains an interesting account of "The Oldest Messrs. Chatto & Windus, which approaches Bookselling Firm in Europe"-that of Brill, of the study of botany from quite a new side. Leyden, which has descended to the present Hitherto we have regarded plants as mere auto-partners (van Oordt and de Stopelaar) in unmata, little removed from inorganic objects. broken succession from Louis Elzivier; and also The aim of Dr. Taylor is to show that all the various qualities and attributes which distinguish animals are also to be found in the vegetable kingdom, and that in both instances they have been evolved in the struggle for existence, and the numerous physical and biological changes which have taken place since plants first appeared upon the globe in the earliest geological times. THE annual volumes of "mineral statistics," which for so many years were published under the able superintendence of Mr. Robert Hunt, have just taken a new shape, and will henceforth be issued by the Home Office in folio form. The volume for 1882, which has recently been published, is the first of the new series. of the many changes attending the transference Its appearance has been delayed in consequence of the Mining Record Office from the Museum of Practical Geology to the Home Office. The work of collating the returns furnished by the inspectors and others has been most efficiently carried out by Mr. R. Meade and Mr. J. B. Jordan, who had long experience in similar work under Mr. Hunt. We learn from these statistics that in the year 1882 there were in the United Kingdom 3,759 collieries, producing 156,499,977 tons of coal, worth at the pit's mouth £44,118,409. PHILOLOGY NOTES. a severe criticism of Dr. Wells Williams's The Middle Kingdom, by Mr. Herbert A. Giles. MEETINGS OF SOCIETIES. ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.-(Tuesday, Jan. 8.) PROF. FLOWER, President, in the Chair.~Mr. H. H. Johnston read a paper on "The Races of the Congo and the Portuguese Colonies in Western Africa." The author stated that Western Tropical Africa, between Senegambia to the north and the river Cunene to the south, offered a vast studying ground to the anthropologist, wherein types of nearly every well-marked African race might be races, he proceeded to describe the Bushmen north observed. After detailing many of the various of Cunene, whom he characterised as about the lowest type of men; but of the five or six specinotice, he remarked that their mental ability was mens who came more particularly under his strangely at variance with their low physical characteristics. The Hottentots were much finer men than the Bushmen as regarded height and build, but they exceeded the latter in baboon-like licentiousness. The western slopes of the Shella mountains were peopled by a tribe called the Andonito, a sturdy race of carriers, who extended river to the Mobindir river were found the best as far north as Benguella. From the Mangula typical African races. Referring to the natives of the Lower Congo, Mr. Johnston observed that they depended almost entirely upon vegetable diet, while they were remarkable for their initiation ceremonies. Traces of Phallic worship were noticed, especially in the interior, and more AT the centenary meeting of the Asiatic Society particularly in the neighbourhood of Stanley of Bengal, which was held last week, the Pool. A Congo market was exceedingly interestfollowing were elected honorary members:-ing, and was held for about four or eight days. M. E. Senart, Prof. Monier Williams, Prof. A. H. Sayce, Prof. E. Haeckel, and Mr. Charles Meldrum. The Asiatic Society of Bengal, which was founded by Sir William Jones in 1784, within a year after his landing at Calcutta, is the parent of our own Royal Asiatic Society, as well as of the sister societies at Madras and Bombay. ON February 6 Prof. Postgate will begin a course of lectures at University College, London, on "The Syntax of the Greek and Latin Languages as compared with one another and The natives would often go 100 miles to attend one SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.-(Tuesday, DR. S. BIRCH, President, in the Chair.-This being |