246 



DISCOVERY 



kno\«i. Its period is in addition the shortest among 

 eclipsing variable stars. 



Death of the Cape Astronomer 



There will be real regret among astronomers at the 

 premature and unexpected death of Mr. Hough, His 

 Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape. The Cape Obser- 

 vatory occupies quite a unique place in astronomy, 

 and has been presided over by a succession of very able 

 observers. Thomas Henderson, afterwards Astrono- 

 mer-Royal for Scotland, carried through at the Obser- 

 vatory his parallax measures of Alpha Centauri. 

 Maclear, his successor, continued the work and deter- 

 mined the distance of Sirius. In 1879 ^fr- Stone was 

 succeeded by the late Sir David Gill, under whom 

 the Cape Observatory reached its pinnacle of fame, 

 becoming the centre of activity for the photographic 

 charting of the heavens. Mr. Hough succeeded Sir 

 David Gill on the latter's retirement in 1907. Under 

 his directorship the high traditions of the Observatory 

 were fuUy maintained. Mr. Hough was a mathemati- 

 cian of considerable powers, and in 1897 and 1898 he 

 carried through a highly important piece of work — 

 the revision of Laplace's theory of the tides, which Sir 

 George Darwin pronounced to be " the most important 

 contribution to the djaramical theory of the tides 

 since the time of Laplace." In collaboration with Dr. 

 Hakn, Mr. Hough exhaustively investigated the solar 

 motion and the streaming of the stars. 



Hector Macpherson. 



Reviews of Books 



THE REVELATIONS OF CRETE 



The Minoans. By George Gl.\sgow. (Jonathan Cape, 

 4s. 6d.) 



Many a traveller who lias " gone east '•' across Italy 

 and the Mediterranean will not readily forget how he 

 watched from the deck of his ship the long, southern coast 

 of the famous island which, so to speak, shuts off the 

 ^gean Sea from the larger sea. Seen from twenty to 

 thirty miles away, Crete's southern coast rises with 

 magnificent abruptness out of the blue waters, finally 

 ascending into lofty ranges with jagged peaks cloaked in 

 snow or rendered half visible by clouds. A still more 

 fortunate traveller is he who has taken ship along the 

 northern coast, gazing at the green plains, studded with 

 white villas, which recede towards the towering back- 

 ground of the island's mountain range, of which Mount 

 Ida is the culminating point. It is difficult to imagine 

 a more romantic-looking island than Crete, and to land 

 on it is to gain impressions of mixed civilisations and 

 religions — Turkish, Greek, and Cretan — jostling into each 

 other amid surroundings of extraordinarv beauty. 



In a word, Crete is the very kind of island to provide 

 an admirable setting for excavations leading to romantic 

 revelations of a past epoch in the world's history. Only 

 twenty-three years ago Sir Arthur Evans started to dig 

 on the island, since when his own excavations and the 

 excavations of other archaeologists at Knossos, Pha;stos, 

 and other sites have disclosed, as Mr. Glasgow remarks in 

 his opening chapter, " the existence of a people whose 

 form of civilisation, the earliest in Europe, flourished 

 long before history begins." This island civilisation has 

 been established almost beyond doubt as the connecting 

 link between the great civilisations of Egy'pt and of Greece. 

 Thus within little more than two decades enormously 

 important facts have been revealed to us which place the 

 history of manldnd in altogether new proportions. 

 Instead of regarding the wonderful era of Greek civilisa- 

 tion, which lasted from about 800 B.C. to about 140 B.C., 

 as some exotic and sudden growth, which had only slight 

 and uncertain relations with the earlier and more mate- 

 rialistic civilisations of the East, we now know that this 

 age owes a great debt to the religions and culture of the 

 ancient Egyptians, which were passed on, being amplified 

 in the process, ttoough Crete to the European mainland. 



Sir Arthur Evans has for several years past been record- 

 ing the results of his excavations in large volumes ; other 

 archaeologists have also described their work in \'arious 

 books. The value of Mr. Glasgow's present account, 

 however, the substance of which was published in 1920 

 and 1921 in Discovery,' lies in the fact that it gives 

 to the ordinary reader a comprehensive, up-to-date, and 

 concise description of the excavations and their import- 

 ance in relation to the progress of civilisation. Indeed, 

 the careful research which has gone to the making of 

 this book is matched by the lucid manner in which that 

 research has been expressed in writing. The age when 

 Crete was a centre of Mediterranean civilisation begins 

 about 2800 B.C. and ends about iioo B.C. Thus it 

 flourished during the Bronze Age, though man first 

 settled in Crete at a place called Knossos during the later 

 Stone Age, gradually moving across the island to the 

 south side and founding colonies, such as that at Phaestos, 

 where pottery of a superior kind to that at Knossos has 

 been found. 



It must not be imagined that Crete merely handed 

 on the torch of culture from Egypt to Greece. IVIinoan 

 civilisation is marked by definite characteristics of its own. 

 " After Schliemann's discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns," 

 as the author indicates, " the term ' Mycenaean ' w-as 

 used in a general sense to cover the whole prehistoric 

 ^■Egean civilisation ; but, now that Crete has put Mycena; 

 into its right perspective, the term ' Minoan ' is used to 

 indicate the earlier and greater phase, while ' Mycenaean ' 

 merely covers the latest phase ; the whole being desig- 

 nated ' .'Egean.' " Professor Elliot Smith is careful to 

 emphasise the fact that '' at the dawn of civilisation 

 Crete occupied a vmique situation, which was exceptionally 

 favourable to the development of a high culture ; and there 

 can be no doubt that she seized her advantage and turned 



1 See Discovery, 

 13 and 14. 



vol. i, nos. 6, 8, and 10, and vol. 



