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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



researches, and his essay is thoroughly up in 

 the latest results of acoustics and the physi- 

 ology of sound, while his lecture is not 

 only crowded with interesting scientific 

 facts, but it is written in a remarkably 

 clear and familiar style ; the only difficulty 

 being, that there is not half enough of it. 

 He closes with the following suggestive 

 passage : "If you were to tell a thoughtful 

 man, who happened to be quite ignorant 

 of the mechanism and action of the voice, 

 that there were living beings who endeav- 

 ored to express their wishes, thoughts, and 

 feelings, merely by the aid of mechanical 

 vibrations, thus causing the particles of 

 air to swing like invisible pendulums back- 

 ward and forward in certain ways, your lis- 

 tener would be impressed by the poverty 

 of the device, and would too hastily con- 

 clude that only a few of the simplest and 

 rudest ideas could possibly find expression 

 by the aid of a contrivance so clumsy. He 

 would tell you it was conceivable, perhaps, 

 that, by appropriate use of vibrations, the 

 idea of joy, or rage, or fear, or possibly of 

 hunger, might be imperfectly expressed, 

 with a few others of like character, but 

 that to expect more would be visionary. He 

 would urge that all vibrations were neces- 

 sarily so similar in 'general character, that 

 it would be impossible to communicate to 

 them the stamp of thought or feeling. And 

 yet how wonderfully each one of us employs 

 just such vibrations, and, with a skill which 

 seems truly superhuman, impresses upon 

 and commits to them an infinite variety 

 of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, which at 

 times we pour forth in torrents that seem 

 inexhaustible; the vastness of the result 

 attained, the poverty of the means, are ut- 

 terly overwhelming ! 



" Think, also, for a moment, of that gift 

 by which we read the stories written on the 

 invisible waves of the air ; how we instant- 

 ly interpret and disentangle their complexi- 

 ties, as they roll in toward us, thousands 

 in a second, with the velocity of rifle-bul- 

 lets. The powers to hear and speak are 

 gifts which, from purely physical and math- 

 ematical stand-points, are absolutely mag- 

 nificent ! And we the possessors of such 

 powers ! Is it conceivable that they have 

 been bestowed on us only to be used as at 

 present ? Do they not point to a future for 



our race when they will be employed in a 

 manner which better accords with their in- 

 expressible richness and grandeur ? " 



Myths and Myth-Makers. Old Tales and 

 'Superstitions interpreted by Compara- 

 tive Mythology. By John Fiske, M. A., 

 of Harvard University. Boston: J. R. 

 Osgood & Co. 



Mr. Fiske- has given us a book, which 

 is at once sensible and attractive, on a sub- 

 ject about which much is written that is 

 crotchety or 1 tedious. He has devoted 

 himself to the study of myths without al- 

 lowing them to impair his judgment on 

 matters of fact, and he has become familiar 

 with myth-makers without adopting their 

 hazy views and ambiguous expressions ; 

 and so, although we may not entirely agree 

 with him on every point, yet we can heart- 

 ily recommend his unpretending but in- 

 structive volume to the large class of read- 

 ers who are interested in the subjects with 

 which he deals. It does not claim to be a 

 work of scientific arrangement and close 

 reasoning. Its author, indeed, speaks of it, 

 in his modest preface, as. a "somewhat 

 rambling and unsystematic series of pa- 

 pers ; " but to the general public it will not, 

 on that account, prove less agreeable. 



Mr. Fiske disclaims any attempt " to re- 

 view, otherwise than incidentally, the works 

 of Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent, 

 and Tylor," nor does he claim "to have 

 added any thing of consequence, save now 

 and then some bit of explanatory comment, 

 to the results obtained by the labor of these 

 scholars ; " but it has been his aim, he says, 

 " to present these results in such a way as 

 to awaken general interest in them." This 

 aim he seems to us to have fully attained ; 

 and we shall be surprised if his book does 

 not do good service in enlisting the sympa- 

 thies of a large number of readers in be 

 half of a science which some critics find it 

 more easy to deride than to comprehend. 

 Mr. Fiske's volume comprises seven chap- 

 ters, which seem to have been originally as 

 many reviews of various works on mythol- 

 ogy and animism. Beginning with " The 

 Origins of Folk-lore," he traces home some 

 of the most widely-spread of the pseudo- 

 historic stories, such as those of William 

 Tell, and of Llewellyn and Gellert, as well 

 as a few of the Popular Tales which have 



