December 22, 1923] 



NA TURE 



913 



Research Items. 



Early Hittite Records. — Valuable additions to 

 our knowledge of the early history and poHtical 

 relations of the peoples of Western Asia are made 

 by Prof. Sayce in the concluding part of Ancient 

 Egypt for the current year, which has just appeared. 

 Prof. Sayce translates some of the early cuneiform 

 Hittite tablets, recently pubhshed by Dr. Forrer, 

 which relate the campaigns of Sargon of Akkad and 

 Naram Sin in Asia Minor. Naram Sin's enumeration 

 of seventeen kings who formed an alliance against 

 him includes rulers of cities in Babylonia, Northern 

 Syria, and Eastern Asia Minor, and proves the 

 intimate connexion which existed between all parts 

 of Western Asia in the third millennium B.C. From 

 one of the Boghaz-Keni tablets, in a record of a later 

 King Telibinus, we now learn that the leader of the 

 Hittite invasion of Babylonia, about 1900 B.C., 

 which overthrew the Amorite dynasty of Khammu- 

 rabi, was Mursilis I. Telibinus also gives a list of 

 the cities over which he ruled, including Damascus. 

 This is the earliest mention of this city in cuneiform 

 tablets. It indicates that the Hittite sovereignty 

 extended southward as far as the northern boundary 

 of Palestine, and explains how Hittite settlers found 

 their way to Hebron in the time of Abraham. 



Mathematical Work of James Gregory. — In 

 vol. xli. of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh 

 Mathematical Society, Prof. G. A. Gibson gives 

 a critical and historical account of the work of 

 James Gregory. To the ordinary student of mathe- 

 matics, Gregory is now known almost solely as 

 the man who first used the phrase " converging 

 series " as a technical term, and as the author of the 

 series for tan"^;r. The latter series is comparatively 

 unimportant, not a fundamental series like Taylor's, 

 and it is very unlikely that it would have been 

 associated with Gregory's name but for the part it 

 played in the Newton-Leibniz controversy. Yet all 

 ..contemporary references to Gregory show that he 

 .was considered to be among the first mathematicians 

 of his day, quite apart from his fame as the author 

 of the " Optica Promota." Undoubtedly the books 

 he published were of sterling merit, though compara- 

 tively few references to them exist in modern mathe- 

 matical literature. 



Al-Razi [Rhazes] as a Pioneer Chemist. — In 

 No. 3-6 of vol. xliv. of the Deutsche Literaturzeitung 

 (Berlin, 1923), Prof. Julius Ruska, of Heidelberg, has 

 an article on the contributions to chemistry of the 

 Persian physician Al-Razi (died a.d. 923 or 932). He 

 points out that a satisfactory history of Islamic 

 medicine and chemistry is still lacking, and remarks 

 that it is necessary to get back to the texts themselves. 

 According to Prof. Ruska, Al-Razi's chemistry, as 

 found in his " Book of the Secret of Secrets," is 

 characterised by the inclusion of a good deal of new 

 material unknown to the Greek alchemists, and also 

 by the classification of chemicals into three classes, 

 according to their origin from animals, plants, or 

 minerals. Prof. Ruska attributes to Al-Razi in 

 addition (a) the introduction of sal-ammoniac, and 

 (b) the first systematic and well-organised treatment 

 of particular chemical reactions ; here, however, he 

 is inaccurate, since Jabir ibn Hayyan (died about 

 a.u. 813) mentions sal-ammoniac very frequently, 

 noting both the natural product and that made from 

 hair, and al.so devotes several small books to a con- 

 sideration of such operations as calcination, distilla- 

 tion, sublimation, etc. As Al-Razi was certainly well 

 acquainted with Jabir's books, it is clear that a great 



deal of the credit for the pioneer work to which Prof. 

 Ruska refers must be given to the latter chemist. It 

 is interesting to note how modern research is restoring 

 to the Muslims the great reputation for chemical skill 

 which they possessed for so long, though it suffered 

 heavily in the latter half of the nineteenth century. 



Phyto - Pathology in Horticulture. — The 

 Gardener's Chronicle for November 3 contains, under 

 the general title " The Relation between Horticulture 

 and Phyto-Pathology," the first instalment of a paper 

 by Prof. Johanna 'Wfesterdijk, read at the Inter- 

 national Horticultural Congress at Amsterdam in 

 September last. Dealing with problems of unusual 

 difficulty, this paper seems to be singularly clear and 

 precise, and is none the less valuable for its frank 

 recognition of the numerous lacunae in our scientific 

 knowledge of the life-history and method of spread 

 of many important horticultural diseases. The 

 present instalment contains a wealth of data upon 

 two important problems — (i) the need for sterilisa- 

 tion of seeds in the case of certain diseases and the 

 methods adopted in various countries in such pro- 

 cesses of sterilisation ; (2) the successful growth of 

 plants in " sick " soils by the genetic selection of 

 resistant strains. 



Trees of the Gold Coast. — The Bulletin of the 

 Imperial Institute, volume 21, No. 2, 1923, contains 

 an interesting account of the trees of the Gold Coast, 

 which is based upon information supplied by Dr. 

 J. M. Dalziel, senior Sanitary Officer of the Gold 

 Coast, and illustrated by four excellent photographs. 

 The trees described occur mainly in the deciduous 

 forests of what is sometimes called the Sudan zone 

 of vegetation. From the forestry point of view the 

 trees are not of great value, but they have many 

 local uses for timber, fibre, gums, and fuel, etc., while 

 the fat ot the shea-butter tree {Butryospermum Par kit) 

 gives to the open park-savannah forests considerable 

 economic value. 



Oceanography of the Java Sea. — A gap in the 

 oceanographical knowledge of the waters of the Malay 

 archipelago has been filled by the researches of 

 Mr. K. M. van Weel in the Java and South China 

 seas from 191 7 to 1920 (Meteorological and hydro- 

 grapliical observations in the western part of the 

 Netherlands East Indian Archipelago : Treubia, 

 vol. iv. pt. 1-4, 1923). The lengthy memoir is 

 accompanied by a portfolio of 28 distributional 

 charts. The floor of the Java Sea is shown to slope 

 gently downwards from Sumatra towards the east, 

 barely reaching a depth of 100 metres to the west of 

 Macassar Strait. East of the 100 metre isobath the 

 depths appear to increase suddenly, but this is out- 

 side the area of Mr. van Weel's survey. A remark- 

 able feature is a deep channel in Sunda Strait between 

 Sumatra and Java. An erosion channel caused by a 

 strong current moving out of the Java Sea suggests 

 itself, but this explanation docs not fit the facts. Mr. 

 van Weel is disinclined to regard it as a tectonic 

 chasm as has been suggested, and leans to the belief 

 that it represents the sunken valley of a large river. 

 He accepts Molengraaff 's pleistocene continent on the 

 site of the Java and China seas, and regards the 

 Sunda submarine channel as a submerged feature of 

 that land. Ail hydrographical as well as a number 

 of meteorological observations are given in full. 



River Pollution. — The pollution of the River 

 Tvne, and its deleterious effect on the salmon fisheries 



NO. 2825, VOL. I 12] 



