May 29, 1885.] 



♦ KNOAA/LEDGE • 



463 



Can any of our ornithological readers say what has 

 become of the cuckoo this year ? I will not say that I have 

 not heard him, but his appearauce, or more strictly speak- 

 ing his song, has been rarer than ever I remember it. The 

 old rhyme goes : — 



In April come lio will, 

 lu May he sings all day. 



But assuredly during the present month he has not only 

 not sung all day, but many consecutive days have elapsed 

 ■without a sound of his voice. Reading that " Between 

 45° 55' W longitude and 41" 41' N latitude (whatever that 

 may mean) unusual and dangerous quantities of ice are 

 floating just now," it occurs to me that possibly the bird 

 (whose Scottish name is synonymous with that of a fool) 

 may be labouring under the illusion that it is the beginning 

 of February instead of the latter end of May. 



"Well within the memory of many who will read these 

 lines, to-day was set apart as one of thank-sgiviiig by the 

 Church of England for the " restoration " of that most 

 contemptible creature Charles II. Any one who will 

 remember how that monarch sold this country to France ; 

 how he brought England to such a condition that (as so 

 vividly told by Pepys) the Dutch during his reign forced 

 their way up to Chatham, and, iis says the immortal diarist, 

 " broke the chaine and burned our ships, and particularly 

 'The Koyal Charles;'" and who has learned from Evelyn 

 how he spent his last most shameful Sunday upon earth, 

 can scarcely fail to be lost in amazement at the combined 

 sycophancy and superstition which can alone have promiited 

 the institution of tuch an awful mockery of "thanks- 

 giving ! " Luckily, reverence and common-sense alike 

 expunged the service from the Prayer-Book in ISS'J. 



jRrfaiftus* 



THE REVISED VERSION OF THE BIBLE.* 



SCAXTY though the library may be of any man of the 

 English-spoken races, it is but rarely indeed that it 

 does not include the Bible. For, siirely, no single work 

 has ever exercised the influence upon our national life, or so 

 interpenetrated it in its social, domestic, and political (to 

 say nothing of its religious) relations, as the Bible has done. 

 And although the old theory of its inspiration has, perforce, 

 been abandoned by earnest and serious thinkers, its influ- 

 ence upon the more highly civilised portion of the human 

 race has in no perceptible degree diminished ; nay, it 

 would rather seem that at no period was popular opinion 

 more prone to insist on public recognition of much in it, 

 which, by many in private, is doubted or denied. Whether, 

 though we view it as the store-house of some of the most 

 ancient history that has descended to us, as a repertory at 

 once of sublime poetry, and of the wisdom an<l philosophy 

 of a most reoiarkable people, or as an ethical code whose 

 increasing purity may be traced through each succeding one 

 of the heterogeneous mass of books of which it is composed, 

 the grave importance of possessing the most accurate and 

 literal possible rendering of its contents must be equally 

 apparent. Now, the Revisers have really made so com- 

 paratively few alterations, that they have almost to be pur- 

 posely sought for to be recognised. Some of them are 

 manifest improvements. To go no further than Genesis L, 5, 



* The Holy Bible .... being the version Ect forth A.i>. 161 1 

 compared with the most ancient authorities and revised. (London : 

 Henry Frowde and C. J. Clay & Son.) 



" And there was evening and there was morning, one 

 day," gives the sense of the original much better 

 than the rendering in tho Authorised version. Wo 

 shall be curious to see how the geological "reconcilers" 

 twist this into a "period." Elsewhere they have been less 

 happy, as in their rendering of Job xix. 25, 2*^ n^d 27, in 

 which Job's mere expression of opinion that he %vill yet bo 

 freed from his loathsome skin disease, and bo shown to be 

 innocent, is given in a form which is nearly as susceptible 

 of being twisted into a pseudo prophecy as that to wliich 

 we are so well accustomed. We are bound in candour to 

 add that in some of their renderings in this very book they 

 have introduced the most undoubted improvements, and 

 exhibited the sense of the original for the first time. The 

 Revisers of the Old Testament have certainly performed 

 their allotted task in a more impartial and (wo use the 

 word in no offensive sense) honest manner than those of 

 the New, whoso retention of such undeniably .s])urious 

 passages as that in 1st Jolm 5, and interpolation of the 

 word one after "evil" in Matthew vi. 13 for purely doc- 

 trinal purposes, so seriously impairs the critical value of 

 their performance. Taken as a whole, this re\ ised version 

 of the Scriptures may be looked upon as the outcome of the 

 ripest scholarship of the age, and as such should, of course, 

 be procured and studied diligently by all to whom the Bible 

 is anything more than a mere word. It is not unworthy 

 of mention that the very earliest MS. of the Old Testa- 

 ment of which the age is definitely known bears the date 

 of A.D. 91G, or 150 years before the advent of William 

 the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings ! 



EUROPE.* 

 By Edward Clodd. 



This useful volume, independent in itself, is one of the 

 series of the " Compendium of Geography and Travel," 

 based on Von Hellwald's "Die Erde und ihre Villker" 

 (" The Earth and her Peoples"). The original translation, 

 made by the competent pen of Professor Keane, had to be 

 recast to adapt the work to the other members of the series, 

 and, more especially, to secure for it that completeness in 

 the physical section which Sir Andrew Ramsay's supervision 

 insures. 



The book has gained throughout from this revision. It 

 is divided into two parts, the first of which is occupied 

 with a description of the physical features of the European 

 Continent, and the second with its political states and 

 peoples. 



The interest and value of the work are sustained from 

 cover to cover, and one notably praiseworthy element is 

 the accurate and lucid survey which is given of the changes 

 resulting in the present distribution of land and water, 

 and which are still operating on the configuration of these 

 in more or less perceptible degree. Of the numerous maps 

 elucidating the text, and which are up to the usual high 

 level of Mr. Stanford's publications, the first illustrates 

 the physical history of the Mediterranean basin, and the 

 oscillations to which that part of Europe has been subject. 

 Geological action has broken the connections between 

 Europe and Africa which formerly separated that deep sea 

 into three large land-locked basin.s, the positions of which 

 are ascertained by Admiral Sjiratt's soundings. And in 

 explaining these, the writers are careful to point out 

 the beneficial results to man of the extended coast-line 

 in ensuring the development of centres of civilisation, 



* " Europe." By F. "W. EudJer and Geo. 6. Chisholm; edited by 

 .Sir Andrew C. Ramsay ; \Vith Ethnological Appendix Ijy Professor 

 A. H. Keane. (London: Edward Stanford, 1885.) 



