DISCOVERY 



111 



Under mixed metaphor he quotes the following from 

 that well-known monthh- magazine, The Fortnightly 

 Review : 



" In 1914 our old regular army crossed swords wth a 

 great numerical superiority of the cream of the German 

 host at concert pitch and undamaged by war." 



It would be hard to beat this metaphor without 

 mixing one up deliberately. 



The word serviette, he says, is common in Scotland 

 from the fifteenth century, but in England it is a late 

 nineteenth-century refinement, now considered vulgar. 

 He might have added, with propriety, the well-known 

 quotation from Punch : 



" No one mentioned in Debrett, 

 Talks about a serviette." 



Yet if you are Scot, you may. 



Under Spoonerism Professor Weekley gives the 

 excellent " kinkering congs." A later one which may 

 be new to some is the exclamation of an old man 

 demanding assistance on a windy day : " \ViIl no one 

 pat my hiccough ? " 



* * * * * 



It remains to say a few words about slang. In this 

 the dictionary is very properly well up-to-date, for 

 slang has enjoyed greater licence and prestige of late 

 years than at any previous time. " The slang of one 

 generation," Professor Weekley remarks, " has often 

 become the literary language of the next, and the 

 manners which distinguish contemporary life suggest 

 that this will be still more frequently the case in the 

 future." Sport, the sea, Anglo-Indians, American 

 stor^'-writers, the cinema, the Stock Exchange, and 

 the War have been fruitful sources of slang. Cushy, 

 blighty, pukka, come from Indian languages. To get 

 it in the neck appears to allude to " where the chicken 

 got the axe." A playful variation is, " where Maggie 

 wore the beads." This trick of dressing up old 

 proverbs and phrases in modern clothes is chiefly 

 American, and was used by O. Henry with great 

 success. It can be very entertaining. Many of the 

 War words will disappear from the language because 

 the conditions that gave rise to them have gone. 

 Others, like stunt and gawblirney , have been used so 

 often that people are sick of them. A good deal of 

 slang is self-explanatory — cold feet, for example ; many 

 phrases, such as the Pragger Wagger for the Prince of 

 Wales, have simple explanations, if certain facts are 

 known ; but for many expressions no explanation has 

 been suggested. Wliy is sixpence a tanner ? and 

 whence arose the phrase the answer is a lemon ? 



* :^ * * * 



This book should settle most of the arguments 

 about words that one hears in railway-carriages or 



smoking-rooms, or reads of in the correspondence 

 columns of newspapers and popular weeklies. Before 

 consulting the dictionary, it might be well to write 

 on a sheet of paper the phrases you wish to turn up. 

 Otherwise, unless 3'ou are some kind of a Pelmanist, 

 your attention will be led sadly astray by other words. 

 ***** 

 Books on the Theory of Relativity still appear. 

 Recently the whole of one issue of our contemporary 

 Nature was devoted to an exposition of the theory, 

 from fourteen points of view. Each contributor was 

 assigned a task, and has endeavoured to say his say in 

 as accurate and understandable a way as possible. 

 Among recent books that have appeared are The Theory 

 of Relativity, hy Prof. R. D. Carmichael,of the University 

 of Illinois (Chapman & Hall, 8s. 6d.), and the second 

 edition of Relativity, The Electron Theory and Gravita- 

 tion, by Mr. E. Cunningham, of St. John's, Cambridge 

 (Longmans, los. 6d.). These books are for students. 

 The most popular exposition is still Dr. Lawson's 

 translation of Einstein's The Theory of Relativity 

 (Methuen, 5s.), now in its third edition. 



* * * * * 



Following Mr. Wordie's article of last month on polar 

 exploration are two in this number, one on the Arctic 

 by Dr. Rudmose Brown, the other on the Antarctic 

 by Mr. Debenham. These three writers are well- 

 known polar authorities. Dr. Rudmose Brown's article, 

 dealing as it does with the Arctic, necessarily covers 

 some of the ground described by Mr. Wordie ; but there 

 is much that is new and different, and a comparison of 

 the views of msn who have made not one only but 

 several voyages to high latitudes is of interest. 

 ***** 



Several new journals dealing with the advancement of 

 learning in their subjects have recently commenced 

 or resumed life. Photographic Abstracts is a new 

 quarterly published by the Royal Photographic Society 

 of Great Britain. Its aim is to give to both the practical 

 and scientific photographer a concise epitome of 

 published work both at home and abroad. The 

 Antiquarian Journal, two quarterly numbers of which 

 have appeared, is the journal of the Society of Anti- 

 quaries of London. It should enlist the interest and 

 support of the general public in touch with anti- 

 quarian matters. The Liverpool Annals of Archceology 

 and Anthropology has resumed publication, a journal 

 which had a distinguished career before the war. 

 ***** 



There are two books recently published which we 



wish to recommend whole-heartedly to readers. The 



first of these is A Survey of English Literature, 1830- 



1880, by Prof. Oliver Elton, of Liverpool,^ and the second 



' Arnold. Two volumes, 32s 



