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NA TURE 



[January 30, 



tribes remote and strange alike in space and in culture, 

 remain in total ignorance of the ideas which govern 

 them, or are driven to acquire what little information 

 they may ultimately obtain in the course of years by 

 actual contact and repeated mistakes, learning their 

 business at the expense of the unfortunate savages they 

 are set to manage, as well as at ours, or else to seek for it 

 in a desultory way without a trustworthy guide through 

 that vast and tropical wilderness, the literature of travel 

 and research. 



Unhappily it cannot be said that the book before us 

 will be of very much use to such inquirers, or to many 

 anthropological students in this country. Addressed, as 

 I have said, in the first instance to metaphysicians, it is 

 written in an involved and allusive style, bristling with 

 metaphysical technicalities ; and the learned author has 

 too little respect for his readers to assist them by dividing 

 his work into chapters or sections, or to give them more 

 than, at most, the bare names of the authorities for his 

 numerous citations. What good is there in telling us 

 vaguely, in a little aside, " see Hiekish," or " see Schwebel," 

 or " see Swan " ? We want to be able to verify the state- 

 ments, and test the use that is made of them ; and the 

 scientific writer, be he professor with world-wide reputa- 

 tion, or obscure student, who neglects to enable us to do 

 this, foregoes half his title to our confidence. Some of 

 these faults, indeed (especially the last), disfigure all the 

 author's works. To call attention to them is not a 

 pleasant task ; nor do I deny — I cordially acknowledge 

 — Dr. Bastian's many claims on our gratitude and 

 admiration. At the same time, a protest in favour of 

 lucidity and exactness is all the more needful where the 

 transgressor is so able and so justly distinguished as Dr. 

 Bastian. E. Sidney Hartland. 



THE BIRDS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 

 A Glossary of Greek Birds. By D'Arcy W. Thompson, 

 Professor of Natural History in University College, 

 Dundee. Pp . xvi -f 204. (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 

 1895.) 



BOSWELL once told Johnson that he had a plan for 

 collecting the poetry of the Border, a task which 

 he fortunately left to be undertaken by a more skilful 

 hand. Not indeed that he feared he would be unequal 

 to it, but, as he told his master, he doubted whether it 

 would be of much good to any one. "Sir," replied the 

 sage, " never mind whether it is going to be any good to 

 any one : do it." It is in the spirit of this answer, that 

 Prof. D'Arcy Thompson has been for years accumulating 

 the material brought together in this volume. He must 

 have often had doubts as to the practical value of his 

 labour, and as to the reception it would meet with from 

 scholars on the one hand, and scientific men on the 

 other. The region of scholarship invaded by a Professor 

 "of science, the precious time of a scientific researcher 

 given up to laborious reading of a voluminous Greek 

 literature ! It is true enough that if called upon to 

 explain to any ordinary man of business what the value 

 of the work is, we should find it hard to do so ; yet we 

 feel all the more disposed to admire the indefatigable 

 perseverance which has carried the author through his 

 self-imposed task to its completion, dogged as he must 

 NO. 1370, VOL. 53] 



have been by the sense that he was travelling all the 

 time in a mist, where no certain conclusions could be 

 drawn as to bird, or legend, or etymology. 



Yet it would be by no means true to say that the book 

 will be of no practical value. In the first place, it is 

 compiled with such laborious thoroughness, that it will 

 serve as a thesaurus of reference and information for all 

 scholars who may have to deal with passages in Greek 

 literature relating to birds ; and such passages are 

 abundant. Their difficulty often arises from the tangle 

 of myth which grew up around certain birds, e.g. the 

 Hoopoe, the Cuckoo, the Nightingale, &c. ; and what a 

 scholar needs for the elucidation of his author, is a 

 handy book of reference to all that has been written 

 or bears on the matter, both in ancient times and 

 modern. Here is exactly the book for him ; he will 

 find (so far as I am able to judge) the whole available 

 material in two or three pages. It matters little whether 

 the guesses, combinations, conclusions are sound or not ; 

 it is the collection of material that will be really valuable. 

 Nor is the pure scholar the only workman who may 

 profit ; the numismatist, the mythologist, the student of 

 the ancient science of divination, may find their advan- 

 tage in this volume. 



The method adopted by the author makes reference 

 to the glossary quick and easy. He begins with the 

 identification of the species where it is at all practicable ; 

 sometimes, perhaps, stating it too definitely, and without 

 the necessary warning-note for too precipitate readers. 

 An etymology sometimes follows, which is, indeed, as a 

 rule, superfluous ; for no scholar will in these days listen 

 to any one but a specialist in a science so difficult as 

 comparative philology, and the attempts are here often 

 obviously unscientific. But no harm is done in this way, 

 for I have noticed hardly a case in which any serious 

 conclusion is built upon an etymology — a form of 

 Teutonic crime familiar to all scholars. Then follows 

 the description of the bird, beginning with Aristotle as a 

 rule, cited, as he should be, from the paging of the 

 Bekker edition : and so onwards to the later Greek 

 writers. Here a critic must point out that a list of the 

 writers quoted, with their date and the edition used 

 in the compilation of this work, would have been a great 

 convenience to the student ; for the Professor's reading 

 has been so insatiable, that he sometimes quotes authors 

 of whom even a good Greek scholar may never have 

 heard in his Hfe. Then come the habits of the species, 

 e.g. nesting, song, migration, each point being clearly 

 distinguished in a separate paragraph ; and lastly, the 

 myths attaching to the bird, with an attempt, instructi ve 

 if not always convincing, to elucidate them. This 

 account of the method pursued applies, it need hardly 

 be said, only to those species which especially attracted 

 the attention of the Greeks : e.g. the eagle, cock, king- 

 fisher, crane, nightingale, swallow, &c. The great 

 majority of glasses are naturally very brief 



Undoubtedly the most striking and interesting parts 

 of the work are those in which the author ceases for the 

 moment to be a compiler, and offers us a new key to 

 the interpretation of certain myths. " I offer," he says 

 in the preface, " a novel, and at first sight a somewhat 

 startling explanation : to wit, that many of them {i.e. the 

 fables about birds) deserve not a zoological but an 



