March 26, 1896] 



NATURE 



483 



earliest (1875-76) was with Prof. Schafer, and related to 

 his experiments upon Medusas. In these letters he de- 

 scribes many interesting results which he was obtaining, 

 and which were, for the most part, afterwards published 

 in the Philosophical Transactions. He had then and 

 always the pen of a ready writer (in hand as well as in 

 tongue), and was besides in the habit of illustrating his 

 descriptions by rough diagrams, so that they are admir- 

 ably clear and instructive. Nearly all the other letters 

 to scientific men are of comparatively recent date, and 

 deal mainly with the controversies on problems of in- 

 heritance (physiological selection and Weismannism) in 

 which, as the readers of NATURE well know, he was so 

 deeply engaged. His paper on physiological selection ^ 

 was read before the Linnean Society in May 1886. It 

 raised a storm of opposition, largely, as he thought, be- 

 cause its opponents would not take the trouble to under- 

 stand it. To Prof. Meldola he writes : 



Physiological selection seems to have brought a regular nest 

 of hornets about my head. ... It seems to me that there is 

 a good deal of misunderstanding abroad, due, no doubt, to the 

 insufficiency with which my theory has been stated. 



There are also several long letters to Mr. Thiselton- 

 Dyer and Mr. Francis Darwin on the same subject, and 

 a friendly controversial correspondence with Prof. 

 Poulton on the subject of Weismannism. But most of 

 these letters have a more or less continuous thread of 

 argument running through them, and do not lend them- 

 selves readily to extracts. The reader who is interested 

 in the controversies is therefore referred to the originals. 

 Even after he had been stricken by paralysis he was 

 not to be deterred from continuing to discuss the 

 problems which most interested him, and he carried on a 

 long correspondence with the Rev. G. Henslow on the 

 subject of the direct action of the environment on plant 

 structures. In his last illness the personal sympathy 

 which he received from his scientific friends much 

 touched him, hard though he felt his fate to be. In a 

 letter to Mr. Thiselton-Dyer, dated September 1893, he 

 writes : 



When one is descending into the dark valley, scientific 

 squabbles seem to fade away in those elementary principles of 

 good will which bind mankind together. And I am glad to 

 think that in all the large circle of my friends and correspon- 

 dents there is no vestige of ill will in any quarter, unless it be 



with and , who both seem to me half-crazy in their 



enmity, and therefore not of much count. 



As for " fortitude," sooner or later the night must come for 

 all of us ; and if my daylight is being suddenly eclipsed, there 

 is only the more need to work while it lasts. But, to tell the 

 truth, I do not on this account feel less keenly the pity of it. 

 With five boys— the eldest not yet in his teens and the youngest 

 still in his weeks ; with piles of note-books which nobody else 

 can utilise, and heaps of experimental researches in project 

 which nobody else is likely to undertake, I do bitterly feel that 

 my lot is a hard one. 



Throughout the letters the character of the man comes 

 openly to the surface, and all the world may see in them 

 the simple child-like nature, the unvarying good humour, 

 the gentle disposition, which were combined m him with 

 the highest intellectual attainments ; qualities which won 

 for George Romanes the affectionate regard of all who 

 were privileged to know him. 



E. A. Schafer, 



1 An admirable epitome of this theory (and of each one_ of the scientific 

 subjects which chiefly engaged Romanes" attention) is given by his 

 biographer in the book before us. 



NO. 1378, VOL. 53] 



EARL\ LEGENDS AND PREHISTORIC 

 FOLK-LORE. 

 The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great ; being a 

 Series of Translations of the Ethiopic Histories of 

 Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes and other Writers., 

 with Introduction, S^c. By E. A. Wallis Budge, Litt.D. 

 Pp. xv-f liv + 610. (^London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 

 1896.) 



WITHIN recent years it has been recognised that 

 the legends and epics of ancient peoples are 

 something more than collections of quaint and amusing 

 tales, that they have a scientific value, and that they yield 

 important results when studied, classified, and compared. 

 The sagas of many nations are well known, and have been 

 already subjected to an exhaustive process of inquiry, 

 but those of others have still to be unearthed. Among 

 this latter class the legendary literature of the Ethiopians 

 had until recently to be set, but the volume by Dr. Wallis 

 Budge, the title of which stands above, will go some way to 

 remove the obscurity in which the beliefs and traditions 

 of that nation have been shrouded. Hitherto the Ethiopic 

 literature that has been published, has in the main been 

 biblical and of interest chiefly to biblical students ; Dr. 

 Budge, however, has collected a goodly body of Ethio- 

 pian traditions from MSS. in the British Museum and 

 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, two of the former 

 having been among those which were brought to England 

 from the Treasury of King Theodore by the British Army 

 in 1868. The Ethiopic texts of these MSS. have been 

 edited by Dr. Budge, and they have been printed for 

 private circulation by Lady Meux. An English trans- 

 lation and introduction which accompanied the text has, 

 however, been published separately on smaller paper, for 

 the use of those to whom the subject-matter, rather than 

 the text of the MSS., would be of interest ; and it is with 

 some of the results to be obtained from a perusal of 

 this latter volume, that we propose in the present article 

 to deal. It is not our purpose, however, to treat the 

 legends from a literary point of view ; our object is 

 rather to extract from them such information as will in- 

 dicate what was the condition of geographical and astro- 

 nomical knowledge among early Oriental nations, and to 

 notice briefly the stories of heroes and others which grew 

 up when the world was yet in its childhood, and when 

 early man was himself still mystified by the phenomena 

 of nature he beheld around him. 



The central figure round which the stories group them- 

 selves is Alexander the Great, many of them being based 

 on traditions or stories borrowed originally from other 

 races. For instance, the book comprises the Ethiopic 

 version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, which has found its 

 way into many languages ; extracts from the Ethiopic 

 versions of larger historical works by Al-Makin and 

 Abu Shaker, Arabic historians of the thirteenth century ; 

 and an extract from the Ethiopic version of Joseph ben- 

 Gorion's " History of the ^ews." The book also contains 

 a short account of Alexander's death, and the utterances 

 of the sages thereon ; the " Christian Romance," which 

 is probably an original Ethiopian work ; and an account 

 of the "Vision of Abba Gerasimus." None of the 

 Ethiopic MSS. which contain these works is actually 

 older than the seventeenth century ; they are, however, 



