6o8 



NA TURE 



[April 25, 1901 



facilitera la diffusion de la notion des actions diastasiques, 

 dans le domaine pratique." 



The author fulfils the promise of his preface in giving 

 a clear though brief exposition of the action of enzymes 

 or diastases, special attention being directed to the 

 experimental methods employed in the study of this 

 subject and in their application to the brewery and the 

 distillery. 



The errors in spelling are numerous, and should be 

 revised in a subsequent edition. Schunck appears as 

 Schmuk ; Marshall Ward figures as two persons, 

 Marshall and Word ; Croft Hill's individuality is also 

 lost as Crop and Hill ; O'Sullivan loses the O' and 

 Lindner is spelt Linter, whilst the English name Heron 

 and the German, Geduld, are converted into the French 

 Hdron and Gedulte. 



Erythrozyme is written erythrozine, racemosus is spelt 

 raciniosus, penicillium appears as penicellium and octo- 

 sporus as octopodus. 



An index would be a valuable addition. J. B. C. 



Mongolia and the Mongols : Results of ati Expedition 

 to Mongolia in the Years 1892 and 1893. By A. 

 Pozdndeff. Vol. ii. 8vo. Pp. 516. Numerous photo- 

 engravings (Russian, 1900). 



This is the second of a series of volumes on Mongolia 

 and its inhabitants which are being prepared by Dr. A. 

 Pozdneeff, and it contains the traveller's diaries during 

 the second year of his journey, when South-eastern 

 and Eastern Mongolia were visited. Starting from 

 Pekin, Dr. Pozdneeff went to Kalgan — the centre and 

 depot for Russian trade with China — and thence to 

 Kuku-khoto, or Gui-hua-chen, the next important com- 

 mercial centre of Southern Mongolia. Returning to 

 K dgan, he visited that portion of Mongolia which lies 

 on the eastern slopes of the Great Khingan — namely, the 

 iowns F'en-nin-sian and Zhe-ho, or Chen-de-fu, whence 

 he went to Dolon-nor (Lama-miao). All these places are 

 well known long since, but, speaking currently Mongolian, 

 Dr. Pozdneeff has learned much more about the trade in 

 these towns than other travellers had before him, and 

 having, moreover, in his capacity of learned Mongolist 

 a free access to the Lamaite monasteries, he was enabled 

 to collect a great amount of information about the inner 

 life of Mongolia, various questions of worship, and 

 especially about the antiquities preserved in the monas- 

 teries. Proceeding from Dolon-nor northwards and north- 

 westwards, towards the Kerulen River, he visited the 

 ruins of Kai-pin-fu — the thirteenth century capital of 

 Khubilai-khan — and obtained there full casts and photo- 

 graphs of an interesting inscription dating from the four- 

 teenth century. Another very interesting Tibetan and 

 Mongolian inscription, dating from 1626, was copied m 

 the same way at Tsagan-suburga, on the Shara-muren 

 River. It may now be taken that this much-controversed 

 spot was one of the five Lao or Kidan capitals — Lin-han-fu. 



The remarks of the diary on the way across the Gobi 

 are especially interesting, in that they give the exact 

 limits between the Gobi proper and the zone of land 

 which lies on the western slopes of the Great Khingan. 

 This limit corresponds with a line which may be drawn 

 on the Russian General Staff Map through the spots 

 where the rivers shown on this map as flowing from the 

 Khingan end in small lakes or marshes as they enter the 

 Gobi. M. Pozdneeff, who crossed the Gobi in June, fully 

 confirms the view upon this region which begins now to 

 prevail, namely, that it is not a desert, but a dry, rolling 

 prairie. In fact, it has the same physical aspects as the 

 dry "rolling prairies" of Canada at the approach of 

 the Rocky Mountains. 



The volume gains very much from the excellent photo- 

 •engravings with which it is illustrated. They give a good 

 Mea of the physical characters of these portions of 

 Mongolia. P. K. 



NO. 1643, VOL. 63] 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



\The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 niantiscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.^ 



Gothic Vestiges in Central Asia. 



I AM in thorough accord with the main principles indicated in 

 Dr. A. C. Haddon's communication, which appeared in Nature, 

 vol. Ixiii. p. 309 (January 24), more especially as to the eastern 

 extension of a fair dolichocephalic race or races, at least as far 

 castas the north-western frontiers of China. It has, however, 

 always struck me, as a student of the ethnology of these dis- 

 tricts, that sufficient attention has not been given to the 

 geographical changes that have certainly occurred throughout 

 the whole of Central Asia, and without which it appears im- 

 possible to understand such writers as Herodotus, Arrian and 

 Ammianus Marcellinus. I claim no new discovery in suggest- 

 ing, with Colonel Tchaikofsky (quoted by Schuyler, vol. i. 

 p. 53), that during the Classical period the rivers Chu and 

 Sary-su, instead of losing their waters in desert lakes, united at 

 Perovsky with the Jaxartes, and flowed along the deserted bed, 

 now known as the Jany Darya, joining finally the old Oxus and 

 making their way along what is still known as the "Ancient 

 Bed " of the Amu Darya to the Caspian. We thus arrive at a 

 satisfactory explanation of the crossing of the "Araxes" by 

 Cyrus, and his description of the homeland of the Massagetge, 

 whom we are then justified in associating ethnologically with 

 the Getse or Goths of other authors. This would throw light 

 also on the position of Arrian's Alexandria Eschate, which I 

 would identify with the modern Jizakh. This was situated on 

 the Tanais, which seems to have been an overflow channel of 

 the upper Jaxartes, leaving the main river at the bend below 

 Khojend and flowing past Jizakh into the Taz Khane, whence 

 it found its way into the Jany Darya. 



We thus also get a satisfactory position for the Issedones, 

 also a Gothic tribe (" West-Saetons "), east of whom were the 

 Asii, Asiani or Pasiani, the Wusuns of the Chinese, who are 

 described as " having blue (or green i) eyes, red beards and 

 monkey-like faces " — alluding to their faces covered with tawny 

 hair. 



When, however. Dr. Haddon comes to his Chinese authori- 

 ties several inaccuracies appear in his account. As Dr. Haddon 

 himself is, apparently, not a student of that language, he has 

 naturally been dependent on others, and the second-hand in- 

 formation with which he has been supplied is in the last degree 

 misleading. He speaks, for instance, of the " Sse or Sek (who 

 are identified with the Sacce)." I have a fair first-hand ac- 

 quaintance with the older Chinese writers, and find myself 

 unable to place these tribes. There were, at the period of which 

 he speaks, Shuks, or rather Pa-shuks, in Szechwen ; but there 

 is no reason to connect them with any external tribe, nor have 

 we a suggestion that they have ever migrated. There was a 

 country — not a people — called Su-li, but the phonetic element 

 here is Sulak, and we must identify the district with the Surak 

 of the Bundahish, the country about the lower Jaxartes. The 

 later writers, it is true, talk of a kingdom — not a people — called 

 by Matwanlin Sse ; but it is, apparently, the modern Sarakhs. 

 The classical Sacse, Scyths and Dahre seem to be variations of 

 the one word, and may be connected with the Tochari of Strabo 

 the Tahia of the Chinese. I am, however, doubtful of Scyth 

 or Sacse being used by the Greeks in any sense as an ethno- 

 graphic term ; rather it applies to their stage of civilisation. 

 We learn very little of these Tokhars from Chinese sources, but 

 from Strabo we gather that they, in conjunction with the Wusuns 

 and the Sakarauli (possibly the inhabitants of the Sarikkol 

 Pamir), bore down on Bactria and put an end to the Greek line 

 of kings. About the same time the Yueh-ti, driven from their 

 homes by the Hiung Nu (Turks), arrived in the country, and the 

 two peoples seem to have more or less coalesced, and we find 

 them a few years later living in apparent harmony, but occupy- 

 ing each its own side of the Oxus, the Yueh-ti apparently being 

 the predominant race, or at least supplying the royal race. 

 This is very different from the account given by his supposed 

 authorities to Dr. Haddon. I have had the misfortune to have 

 met with M. Drouin before, but now become acquainted with 



1 T'sing, the word usjJ, means the colour of deep, pure wate •— gp-ey, blue 

 or green. , , , i -i. • 



