1 66 



NATURE 



[December 8, 1910 



lished long ago, in colour, by the French scholar 

 Prisse d'Avennes. The tomb was then lost sight of 

 until re-discovered by Prof. Newberry some years" ago. 

 No new publication of the tomb was made, though it 

 is understood that Mr. Howard Carter made a line 

 coloured drawing for one, until Mr. H. R. Hall pub- 

 lished some rough sketches, correcting Prisse's errors, 

 in the "Annual of the British School at Athens" 

 (vol. viii., pp. 172-3), following this up with a photo- 

 graph of the whole important scene, in the same pub- 

 lication (vol. X., p. 154). Herr Miiller then followed 

 with a coloured reproduction on a larger scale in the 

 first volume of " Egyptological Researches." This is 

 very useful, though naturally it is not likely to be 

 so good as Mr. Carter's drawing, which so unaccount- 

 ably remains unpublished still. Herr Miiller's colours 

 were too crude. 



In the present volume of " Researches," Herr 

 Miiller provides us with similar (and too 

 crudely) coloured reproductions of the scenes 

 painted on the walls of the tomb of Menkhe- 

 perra-senb, which also include representations of 

 Minoans. The figures and features of the Cretan 

 ambassadors to the court of Thothmes HI. are here 

 represented more clearly than in the tomb of Senmut, 

 though the vases which they carry are not so well or 

 so carefully portrayed. The best of all these repre- 

 sentations is probably that in the tomb of. Puamra, 

 also at Thebes, which will, we hope, shortly be pub- 

 lished with a coloured drawing made on the spot by 

 a most competent artist, Mr. de Garis Davies. 



Herr Miiller publishes a great many other scenes from 

 tombs and temples at Thebes, with explanations, which 

 are naturally comprehensible only to Egyptological 

 experts, though the subjects of which they treat are 

 of great interest to the general historian, anthro- 

 pologist, and archaeologist. Herr Miiller is too tech- 

 nical, is insufficiently explicit, and assumes too much 

 knowledge on the part of his readers, since he is not 

 now writing exclusively for the edification of his 

 engeren Fachgenossen. His style also is too note- 

 t)ooky, too much mere jotting down, too staccato, 

 though we must .congratulate him on his command of 

 English. It is true that he would have done well had 

 he submitted his text for revision to an American col- 

 league before publication, as there remain in it many 

 clumsy phrases and strong Teutonisms. Such forms 

 as " Merenptahtext," " Kahunpapyrus," are German, 

 not English ; we always insert a hyphen between the 

 elements of such combinations. We mav also quote 

 a very weird phrase on p. 76, " not doest thou look at 

 the mountains " for "thou dost not look at the moun- 

 tains " ; and the quaintly unintelligible sentence, 

 "strange that Duemichen's uncritical credulity 

 toward the plays of the latest time has been 

 revived recently ! " (p. 39), needs an Egypt- 

 ologist with a knowledge of German as interpreter. 

 Herr Miiller is not talking about Schauspiele, as one 

 might suppose. It is not clear to us what, or rather 

 whom, he is here talking about, or rather, at ; this 

 writer seems somewhat given to cryptic " digs " at 

 other men of science, which are apt to fall flat if in- 

 comprehensibly phrased ! 



Though the coloured plates might sometimes be 

 NO. 2145, VOL. 85] 



more carefully printed {e.g. plate xii. in our copy), the 

 photographic illustrations of the battle-scenes of 

 Rameses II. at Karnak and Luxor are very fine, and 

 the whole book reflects credit on its author and great 

 credit on the Carnegie Institution. 



UNPROGRESSIVE PETROLOGY. 

 Les Roches et leurs Elements mindralogiques ; De- 

 scriptions, Analyses Microscopiques, Structures, 

 Gisements. By Ed. Jannettaz. Fourth edition, 

 revised and enlarged. Pp. 704. (Paris : A. Her- 

 mann et Fils, 1910.) Price 8 francs. 



MOST of those who were students of petrology in 

 the later years of the nineteenth century were 

 familiar with a modest volume, published by the late 

 M. Jannettaz, under the title of ; " Les Roches." It 

 had a special interest for English readers, as it enabled 

 them to realise the lines on which the teaching of 

 the subject was carried on in France. Amongst other 

 matters, it comprised a readable account of the Haiiy 

 system of crystal notation long forgotten in this 

 country, a short section on crystal optics, and a de- 

 scription of the chief rock-forming minerals and rock 

 types. 



It was considerably enlarged but hardly improved 

 in the third edition published, after a long interval, 

 in 1900, and still to be found in some of 

 our reference libraries. More than a hundred 

 pages are devoted to the optical characters of crystals, 

 but the treatment is at once ambitious and incom- 

 plete, and whatever merits it possesses are obscured 

 by the innumerable misprints and blunders, which are 

 found in its pages, and must render them almost un- 

 intelligible to anyone who resorts to them for informa- 

 tion. It is difficult, indeed, to believe that the proofs 

 ever passed through the author's hands. We find, 

 for instance, "E^/2" for E^/o^, "cos^irt/T" for 

 cos 2 TT f /T, and are startled to learn that "cosr = 2." 

 The description of the rock-forming minerals is ex- 

 panded into a treatise on the entire niineral kingdom 

 and little used terms like newjanskite and sysserskite 

 are included, while we look in vain for the refractive 

 indices and birefringence of the commoner rock-form- 

 ing minerals. The classification and nomenclature of 

 the igneous rocks is open to serious criticism, and is 

 based to a considerable extent on chronological prin- 

 ciples, for we are told : — " Les geologues repugneront 

 longtemps k confondre sous le meme nom des roches 

 qui sont arrivees au jour h des epoques si differentes." 

 It would have been a work of supererogation to 

 enumerate the defects of a book published ten years 

 ago, if the fourth edition, which bears the date 1910, 

 had not proved on careful examination to be identical 

 with its predecessor. It is not merely that the ad- 

 vances of science in the interval have been ignored, 

 but that every inaccuracy in the third edition, however 

 obvious to the most casual reader, is faithfully repro- 

 duced. A hiatus in a reference, represented by a line 

 of points, is left still unfilled, and even the table of 

 errata, which corrected only a fraction of the mis- 

 prints, and added more of its own, remains word for 

 word the same. Yet we are told that this is a new 

 edition, "revue et augmentee." The revision consists. 



