December 5, 1895] 



NATURE 



99 



the law of the diffusion of incoming impulses works 

 against a too great specialisation in this direction. Yet 

 in the highly defective this specialisation must be carried 

 very far, and in those whose endowments are distinctly 

 unusual the dominance of one sense in controlling the 

 reactions of the central system may rise to the dignity of 

 a deforvtity" The last words should bring comfort to 

 any poor victim of a temperament, but are a cheap sub- 

 stitute for the clear thought and scientific terminology of 

 M. Binet or M. Ribot. 



The account of consciousness and the relations between 

 stimulation and sensation is also very defective. " Grant- 

 ing," we are told, "that the central system responds 

 throughout a large extent to all the impulses acting upon 

 it, and that by virtue of these responses the background 

 varies ; it remains to be determined how far the law and 

 order in these changes can be formulated. . . . The re- 

 actions obtainable by the application of a given stimulus 

 depend on the other stimuli with which the new one is 

 competing. Cold water does not feel cold after ice ; a 

 black line on a grey surface has a value different from 

 the same line on a white one, and so on throughout all 

 contrasts. This relation between the stimulus and the 

 sensation is expressed in the psycho-physic law by the 

 formula that sensation increases in intensity according 

 to the logarithm of the stimulus. The limits within 

 which this law is applicable do not immediately concern 

 us, its use here being purely to express the fact that at any 

 moment the activities of the nervous system under the 

 influence of existing stimuli form a background against 

 which a new stitntdtts, according to its intensity and 

 character, may or may not be recognised." (The italics 

 are ours, here and elsewhere.) 



The poverty of this conception of consciousness is 

 typical of the whole book, which reads like a "background" 

 —a dull record of facts with no living factors playing in 

 and out of them, and making the physiological and 

 psychological aspects into a conscious unity. It seems 

 to have missed its mark, inasmuch as it is neither a 

 scientific tiext-book nor a social philosophy. 



F. A. Welby. 



THE VALLE V Of KASHMIR. 

 The Valley of Kashmir. By W. R. Lawrence, CLE. 

 (Oxford : Frowde, 1895.) 



UP till now the standard authority on Kashmir was 

 Drew's well-known book. It contained a good deal 

 of information about routes and passes, and concerned 

 itself not so much with Kashmir proper as with the out- 

 lying and dependent territories. The present work has 

 a more restricted aim, and deals more thoroughly with its 

 subject. The reader must distinguish between Kashmir 

 the kingdom and Kashmir the vale. The former is a 

 large territory containing enormous mountain areas, 

 chiefly uninhabited and stretching, in theory at any rate, 

 from Tibet to Chitral and from the Pamirs to the border 

 of the great Indian plain. But Kashmir proper is a level 

 valley, apparently an old lake basin, included between a 

 fork of the Himalayas. On the map it resembles, as Mr. 

 Lawrence well remarks, a white foot-print set in a mass 

 of black mountains. The level of the valley floor is about 

 6000 feet above the sea, and it is approximately 84 miles 

 in length and 20 to 25 miles in width. Numerous trade- 

 NO. 1362, VOL. 53] 



routes debouch upon this valley and concentrate upon' 

 its populous capital, Srinagar on the Jhelum. To Kash- 

 mir proper may also be reckoned the fertile lower portions 

 of a number of tributary side-valleys, for the most part 

 exceedingly beautiful, and well marked with wood, water, . 

 and meadow. This beautiful area— the garden of India 

 — is shut off from the rest of the world by bare and, in 

 many places, snowy mountain ranges, or by a gorge which 

 has only a few years ago been trained to admit a cart 

 road. It is inhabited by an interesting race, speaking a 

 language and having a literature, a written history, and 

 an art of their own. Thus Kashmir is marked out by 

 nature, history, and circumstance as a geographical unit 

 suited for separate treatment and study. 



The Government of the Happy \'alley was up till re- 

 cently, in some respects, one of the worst in Asia. There, 

 was no security of property, and personal liberty hardly 

 existed for the peasantry, who were liable to forced labour 

 at any time of the year, however ruinous to their industry,, 

 and had to pay taxes to swindling publicans, equally dis- 

 loyal to the tax-payer and to the State. To put an end 

 to this state of things became a crying necessity. A 

 survey and land-settlement was decreed, and entrusted to 

 officials under British direction. The bulk of the work 

 was done by Mr. Lawrence, who has been for some years 

 the Maharaja's Settlement Commissioner, and by whom 

 the whole transaction has been concluded. In his daily 

 labour he has been brought in contact with all classes of 

 the community, and especially with the peasants. He has 

 been obliged to make himself familiar w ith the nature of 

 soils, the systems of irrigation and agriculture, the character 

 of the crops, the resources of the country generally, 

 the system of taxation, the character of the official 

 class concerned, and to deal with its collection, and 

 all manner of similar and connected questions. In 

 course of his work he has been forced to accumulate a 

 large body of notes on these matters, and he was thus 

 designated by circumstances as the man best suited to 

 report on the condition and prospects of the country 

 generally. I gather that the volume under consideration 

 is practically the report, or the major portion of the 

 report, drawn up by Mr. Lawrence for the Indian Govern- 

 ment which placed his services at the disposal of the 

 Kashmir Durbar. 



The scheme of the report is drawn on large lines. There 

 are chapters descriptive and historical. Others deal with 

 the geology, physical history, flora, and fauna of the 

 valley and its surrounding slopes. There is a chapter on 

 archaeology, another on statistics, whilst the remainder 

 deal with the people, their races, languages, religions, 

 manners and customs, industries, and trade, and with the 

 old Administration and the new Settlement. Some of 

 these chapters are admittedly compilations. That on 

 geology is little more than a reprint of passages from 

 Lyddeker's memoir. Less satisfactory is the archiieo- 

 logical chapter, which chiefly consists of quotations from 

 Sir Alexander Cunningham's reports— excellent at the 

 time they were written, but now superseded by the 

 work of excavation and research which is being done 

 for the Indian Government by Dr. Stein. The chapter 

 on the flora makes no profession of completeness, but, 

 being contributed by experts, is authoritative as far as it 

 goes. It is chiefly confined to " plants and trees possess- 



