October 1, 1894.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



227 



in the same interesting and lively style the habits and 

 manners of Indian bii-ds and beasts, insects and crabs. 



For a natural history book it is very li^lit literature, but 

 no one can read it through -without picking up a great 

 many facts which are set out with care and precision, and 

 they are facts of a kind which only a naturalist who has 

 himself observed in the field and jungle can supply to his, 

 readers. There are here and there a few thoughtful 

 remarks and philosophical speculations, which appear in 

 the midst of rather forced jokes and stories of the 

 exaggerated type which have been described as the new 

 humour ; but anyone who has the patience to bear with 

 the humorous, or intendedly humorous, passages will be 

 well repaid for reading the book through. There are some 

 eighty excellent illustrations prepared by Mr. R. N. Stern- 

 dale, author of " The Mammalia of India " and " Denizens 

 of the Jungle." As a specimen of the forced humour 

 which E. H. A. too frequently introduces, one may quote 

 his description of hot weather in India : — " The weather is 

 getting warm. This is, perhaps, not expressive enough, 

 what I mean is that the atmosphere is getting like that 

 which we may imagine to prevail under a pie-crust when 

 the pie is in the oven ; of course, I am writing from tlie 

 coast. Up country, on the plains of the Deccan, the 

 atmosphere of the oven outside the pie furnishes a better 

 illustration. . . . Anything like a Ion? walk in the 

 morning endows yon with a thirst which will not leave you 

 all day. It is not a wholesome thirst either, not a demand 

 of nature for refreshing forms of moisture, but a kind of 

 glutinous thickness such as troubles the throat of the oftice 

 gum bottle." But, nevertheless, the book contains eloquent 

 passages. E. H. A. tries to induce his readers to ob-ierve 

 nature rather than to aim at becoming a naturalist, whose 

 sole object is to collect specimens and name them. Beware, 

 says he, of the snare which lurks under the intoxicating 

 pleasure of collecting, and set a watch upon yourself lest 

 you degenerate into a collector, and cease to be a naturalisf. 

 As soon as you begin to f-el that a rare bird or butterfly is 

 not so much a bird or butterfly to you as a "specimen," 

 you have caught the disterap-r, and must take measures to 

 check it. The best rem 'dy I know is to set asid j one day 

 in the week for a sabbath of peace and goodwill, on whi,:h 

 the instruments of death must be laid aside, and an 

 amnesty proclaimed to all creation. Then you may move 

 among living things with heart free from guile and mind 

 undisturbed by stratagems, and you wdl note many things 

 in tbem which you never saw vvlien yo i were scb-'miii',; to 

 compass their destruction. E. H. A. has a theory that the 

 noises made by insects and tree frogs, and other living 

 things whose voices till the air of the tropics with a con- 

 tinual babel of sound, are made simply because the little 

 creatures are happy, and not from any sexual impulse. 

 His theory is that when an animal is well and happy, there 

 is an overflow of nervous energy. The wagt nh and 

 redstarts let it off by shaking their tails, and the crickets 

 and the frogs let it otf in noise. " Do you tliink," says he, 

 "that man is the only animal wh'ch feels the monotony of 

 doing nothing ? " All living things feel it till you get so 

 low down in the scale of life that they can scarcely be said 

 to feel anything at all. 



Con'a of Tfi-daij. (Nelson and Sons, London, 1894.) 

 Most of the matter in this little book has been extracted 

 from a larger book by G. W. Gilmore, who went to Corea 

 as a teacher in the Royal College, founded by the Corean 

 king ill his capital for the education of the sons of the 

 Corean nobles. Mr. Gilmore is an expert photographer, 

 and some excellent reproductions of his Corean photo- 

 graphs are given. When Mr. Gilmore arrived in Corea 

 he found that he and his co-teachers occupied an enviable 



position in Corean eyes, as men who had taken rank in a 

 great foreign examination. In other words, they were 

 looked upon as " gentlemen " in the Corean sense, and 

 were expected to keep up the dignity of their position. 

 Soon after their arrival a soldier was sent to each teacher, 

 by order of His Majesty, to be a sort of personal attendant 

 and messenger. If Mr. Gilmore went out shooting, the 

 soldier in attendance always took the gun and insisted on 

 carrying it till they reached the hunting ground. The 

 distress of his soldier was quite pitiful when he took out 

 two pieces, a shot gun and a rifle, so that he had to submit 

 to one of them being carried by Mr. Ciilmore. On another 

 occasion one of the teachers took to gardening, and began 

 to use a spade, when his attendant ran up and tried to 

 take the spade out of his hands, remonstrating with him 

 for doing coolies' work. The common people are extremely 

 polite, and Mr. Gilmore describes them as always showing 

 great kindness and distinction to foreigners. In summer 

 the Coreans have a peculiar device for keeping cool. Next 

 to the body they wear a framework made of split bamboo 

 woven in fancy designs. This is made so as to be 

 supported from the shoulders, and holds the clothes away 

 from the pers >n, so as to permit the air to circulate freely. 

 Many interesting details are given with regard to the 

 fashions of the people, their manners and customs, religions 

 aud superstitions, and the extraordinary absolute monar- 

 chical government, which seems to be entirely independent 

 and uncontrolled by the will of the common people. Mr. 

 Gilmore seems to have had exceptional opportunities of 

 observing the Corean peiple. He tells his story well, 

 keeping up the reader's interest from the first page to the 

 last of his little book. 



Tlie Eiirth : an Introduction to the Stuilij of Inorgank 

 Nature. By Evan W. Small, M.A. (Cantab), B.Sc. (Lond). 

 (Methuen & Co., London, 1891.) Taken as a whole, this 

 is an excellent little mmual for the general i-eider, as wel 

 as for the student who selects it as a text-book iu physio- 

 graphy. No book which ranges over so wide a sene-i of 

 subjects can be exoected to be ab ive all criticism. Tnus, 

 in givin,' an accaint of the nebular hypothesis, Mr. SmiU 

 says : " The cl )udy patches of light m the heavens known 

 as uebuliE (wiio^e spectra, as shown by Hu^jgins in 1861, 

 consist of a few bright hues, indicating glowing gaseous 

 mitter) represent, according to this theory, tue earliest 

 stage in the process of world formation, and in the great 

 nebula in Andromedt (as shown in a photograph taken by 

 Mr. Isaac R jbert-; of Live'-po A) Wti have an actu il instance 

 (m a very larga scale of s une sucli process of cosmicil 

 evolut on as is pictured in Ltplaoe's theory. In this 

 photograph we see a large bright central mass, surrounded 

 by a series of successive rings of bright miterial (the outer 

 ones becoming fainter), separated by dark spaces." Mr. 

 Small is evidently not aware that the large majority of 

 nebul.B do not give a gaseous but a continuous spectrum, 

 and that the streams of matter about the Andromeda 

 nebula are by many observers believed to be spirals and 

 not circles. There is certainly no evidence in the photo- 

 graphs of ring within ring of nebulous matter, and the 

 nebulie surrounded by spiral streams of nebulous matter 

 are very numerous. 



A Journey in other Worlds. By John Jacob Astor. 

 (Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1894.) Mr. Astor 

 takes his readers to an imaginary Jupiter and an imaginary 

 Saturn, and gives them a historical sketch of our own 

 world in a.d. 2000. The value of such flights of imagina- 

 tion depends to a large extent on the knowledge di.^played 

 by the imaginative guide, aud on the way m which he 

 makes his narrative appear probable and consistent with 

 known facts and received scientific theories. Mr. Astor 



