514 



NATURE 



{March ig, 1888 



alliance, or for some other purpose. If the Amazons are, 

 as is commonly thought, merely legendary persons, having 

 no real existence, this sculpture at Boghaz-Keui may yet 

 be looked upon with probability as tending to show that, 

 in what may be called their own country, the story of these 

 female warriors was believed. On the whole, it seems 

 likely, in view of the evidence of this bas-relief, that the 

 story rests on a substantial basis of truth. There is also, 

 I may add, in the Hamath inscriptions, what looks very 

 much indeed like the indication of female warriors armed 

 with club and sword.^ 



Before passing from this Boghaz-Keui sculpture (othei 

 interesting bas-reliefs which are there I cannot now 

 discuss), I must refer to the fact that in several instances 

 curious symbols are held in the hands of several of the 

 personages in the processions, or are placed near them. 

 The floral or vegetable symbols held in the hands of the 

 principal personages are surmounted by a remarkable 

 oval figure. This oval object Prof. Sayce regards as a 

 symbol of deity ; and the vegetable or other figure 

 beneath he takes for the name of a god. That the name 

 of a god could be indicated by characters such as these 

 seems to me a thing not easily credible ; and the inscrip- 

 tions give very strong reasons for regarding the oval 

 object as a symbol denoting, not deity, but a city.^ The 

 more probable view seems to be that these figures sur- 

 mounted by the oval object are the distinctive standards 



Fig, C— I. Standard, with symbol of " city " at Boghaz-Keui. 2. Mandrake 

 after Visconti (" Iconographie Grecque") from manuscript of Dioscorides. 



of cities. Unfortunately in the places where these stand- 

 ards occur the sculptures have suffered much from the 

 effects of weather and of time ; and the question has 

 been complicated by the differences in the representations 

 given by M, Texier and by MM. Perrot and Guillaume. 

 The representations of the latter, based to a great 

 extent on photographs, are no doubt by far the more 

 accurate. M. Perrot seems to have thought that all 

 these symbols are related to the mandragora or man- 

 drake, a view which I venture to think very improbable. 

 The oval symbol, with its curious marking, is certainly 

 not the fruit of the mandrake, which is round and pendent, 

 not oval and erect. But there is one place in the grand 

 tableau where, I should say, the mandrake is clearly 

 intended.^ One of these is the symbol borne by the male 

 figure immediately behind what I may call the queen. 

 This figure bears in his hand, as a standard, the man- 

 drake root with the ends turned up into feet. The 

 ancients not only attributed aphrodisiacal and fecundating 

 properties to the mandrake-root, but they also considered 

 that it resembled the body of a man. Pythagoras is said 

 to have spoken of the mandrake as "of human shape." 

 And the difficulty about the feet was easily got over by a 



» Under an indication of sex scarcely to be mistaken, is an arm with a 

 hand grasping a club and a sword or dagger. 



^_ This was, I believe, the view of Prof Sayce, before he recognized the 

 Hittite character of the Boghaz-Keui sculptures. 



3 There is evidence also equally clear on the other bas-reliefs at Boghaz- 

 Keui which I do not here discuss. 



little manipulation.^ There may possibly be some con- 

 nection between this single male figure with the mandrake 

 standard behind the queen, and what was said by the 

 Greeks as to the relations of the Amazons with the males 

 of a certain city separated from them by a mountain. I 

 should add that the male figure immediately behind the 

 king has the pole of the standard and the oval above, 

 but the intervening figure is gone. It is probably still the 

 standard-pole with the last figure to the reader's left in the 

 central tableau. And possibly, too, at Karabel, the Hittite 

 characters are to be understood as depicted on a standard. 



( To be cotitittued.) 



TIMBER, Ai\'D SOME OF ITS DISEASES.^ 



VI. 



T F we turn our attention for a moment to the illustra- 

 •^ tions in the first article, it will be remembered that 

 our typical log of timber was clothed in a sort of jacket 

 termed the cortex, the outer parts of which constitute 

 what is generally known as the bark. This cortical 

 covering is separated from the wood proper by the cam- 

 bium, and I pointed out (p. 184) that the cells produced 

 by divisions on the outside of the cambium cylinder are 

 employed to add to the cortex. 



Now this cortical jacket is a very complicated structure, 

 since it not only consists of numerous elements, differing 

 in different trees, but it also undergoes some very curious 

 changes as the plant grows up into a tree. It is beyond 

 the purpose of these articles to enter in detail into these 

 anatomical matters, however; and I must refer the reader 

 to special text-books for them, simply contenting myself 

 here with general truths which will serve to render clearer 

 certain statements which are to follow. 



It is possible to make two generalizations, which apply 

 not only to the illustration (Fig. 20) here selected, but also 

 to most of our timber-trees. In the first place, the cortical 

 jacket, taken as a whole, consists not of rigid lignified 

 elements such as the tracheids and fibres of the wood, 

 but of thin-walled, soft, elastic elements of various kinds, 

 which are easily compressed or displaced, and for the 

 most part easily killed or injured — I say for the most part 

 easily injured, because, as we shall see immediately, a 

 reservation must be made in favour of the outermost 

 tissue, or cork and bark proper, which is by no means so 

 easily destroyed, and acts as a protection to the rest. 



The second generalization is, that since the cambium 

 adds new elements to the cortex on the inside of the latter, 

 and since the cambium cylinder as a whole is travelling 

 radially outwards — i.e. further from the pith — each year, 

 as follows from its mode of adding the new annual rings 

 of wood on to the exterior of the older ones, it is clear 

 that the cortical jacket as a whole must suffer distension 

 from within, and tend to become too small for the en- 

 larging cylinder of rigid wood and growing cambium 

 combined. Indeed, it is not difficult to see that, unless 

 certain provisions are made for keeping up the continuity 

 of the cortical tissues, they must give way under the 

 pressure from within. As we shall see, such a catastrophe 

 is in part prevented by a very peculiar and efficient 

 process. 



Before we can understand this, however, we must take 

 a glance at the structural characters of the whole of this 

 jacket (Fig. 20). While the branch or stem is still young, 

 it may be conveniently considered as consisting of three 

 chief parts. 



(i) On the outside is a thin layer of flat, tabular cork- 

 cells (Fig, 20, Co), which increase in number by the activity 



I In the drawing in a manu£C"ipt of Diosco'ides, of the fifth century, in the 

 library of Vienna, and in Visconti's engraving, the mandrake root is grasped 

 by a female figure. An artist, who is painting the mandrake, is actually 

 accentuating the feet. 



^ Continued from p. 279. 



