March 1, 1898. J 



KNOWLEDGE 



51 



Notices of Boofts. 



— — • — 



Familiar Studies in Homer. By Agnes E. Gierke (Long- 

 mans, Green & Co.)- Miss Clarke, who is well known to 

 our readers by her astronomical writings, treats in this 

 delightful book of many details of life and civilization during 

 Homeric times. The volume is a collection of essays or 

 articles, many of which have been already published in the 

 pages of Xiiturc, Macmillun, and the British Qiuirtrrb/ 

 Review. In discussing the Homeric knowledge of astronomy 

 Miss Clerke points out that none of the planets are referred 

 to in either the Iliad or the Odyssey, though many of the 

 fixed stars and constellations are described and named, a 

 fact which points to the high antiquity of the Homeric 

 poems. Hesiod, she remarks, appears equally unconscious, 

 with Homer, of the distinction between the " fixed " and 

 " wandering " stars. In anotber chapter Miss Clerke deals 

 with " Homeric Horses," " The Dog in Homer," " The 

 Metals in Homer." A very interesting chapter is that on 

 Homeric meals. The Homeric bill of fare was concise and 

 admitted of slight diversification. Day after day, says 

 Miss Clerke, and at meal after meal, roast meat, bread, 

 and wine were set before perennially eager guests, in whose 

 esteem any fundamental change in the materials of the 

 banquet would certainly have been for the worse. Variety, 

 in fact, was in the inverse ratio of abundance ; butcher's 

 meat (as we call it) was the staple food of Greek heroes. 

 Oxen, however, were not recklessly slaughtered ; "great 

 meals of beef" usually honoured great occasions. The fat 

 beasts, reckoned to be in their prime at five years old, met 

 their fate for the most part in connection with some expia- 

 tory ceremony, as that employed to stay the pestilence in 

 the First Iliad. The gods were served first with tit-bits 

 wrapped in fat and reduced by fire to ashes with steamy 

 odours, supposed to be peculiarly grateful to immortal 

 nostrils. Vegetables figured very scantily, if at all, at 

 Achaean feasts ; one species only is expressly apportioned 

 for heroic consumption. Nestor and Machaon were guilty 

 of eating onions as a rehsh with wine. Wine was also 

 mixed with goat's cheese and honey, and esteemed the most 

 refreshing and delightful of drinks. The book is interesting 

 from beginning to end, and can be heartily recommended. 



Asinmomi/ for Evcry-day Readers. By B. J. Hopkins 

 (London: Geo. Philip and Son, 1893). This well-illustrated 

 little book explains in a simple and very elementary 

 manner the phenomena of the tides, the seasons, eclipses 

 and occultations, meteors, shooting stars, and comets. 

 The chapter on the phenomena of meteors is especially 

 interesting, as Mr. Hopkins is himself a practical observer of 

 meteors. At page 78 he gives a good picture of the corona 

 visible in Egypt during the ecHpse of 1882, but it is turned 

 the wrong way up, and the comet which was shown on the 

 eclipse photographs at a distance of about a radius from 

 the sun's limb has been tampered with by the artist and 

 turned round so that its tail, in the neighbourhood of the 

 nucleus, is directed nearly radially towards the sun's centre, 

 as is usually the case with comets, but in this instance it 

 was inclined at a considerable angle to the radius vector. 

 As this cannot be an effect due to perspective, it probably 

 indicates that the comet, when near to perihelion, was 

 moving very rapidly compared with the velocity with which 

 the matter of its tail was being driven backward from its 

 nucleus. 



Remarkabk Comets. By 'William Thynne Lynn (Edward 

 Stanford, 1893). Mr. Lynn's gift for historical research 

 is already well known. In this little book of forty pages 

 he brings together a mass of historical information with 

 respect to the more remarkable periodical comets, which 

 will be found generally interesting as well as valuable to 



the student. Mr. Lynn barely attempts to deal with the 

 physical constitution of comets, but some of his remarks 

 are original and bold. Speaking of the observed connection 

 between some comets and meteor streams, he says "It is 

 quite possible that the observed identity of orbits, instead 

 of showing community of composition, simply arises from 

 the comet having been caught and kept in durance by the 

 meteors. The small mass of comets is evidenced by the 

 absolutely imperceptible effect produced in altering the 

 motions of the planets and their satellites when comets 

 have approached them." Thus Lexell's comet is instanced 

 as having passed nearer to Jupiter than its most distant 

 satellite, without having produced any recognizable change 

 in the orbit of the planet or its satellites, though the orbit 

 of the comet was entirely changed by the rencontre. 



^cuncc Notes. 



Prof. C. A. Young, in a recent letter, states that he sees 

 the fifth satellite of -lupiter with the Princeton 23-inch 

 achromatic whenever circumstances are favourable at the 

 time of elongation. He makes the period llh. 57m. 4s. 



Two parties are leaving England to make observations 

 during the solar eclipse of April 15th — IGth. One will be 

 stationed at Para Cura, in Brazil ; the other, about sixty 

 miles from Bathurst, on the West Coast of Africa. The 

 sun will be totally eclipsed for 1 mins. 43 sees, at the 

 former station, and 4 mins. 12 sees, at the latter. 



An electric locomotive of about 2000 horse power, or 

 i more than the power of the largest steam locomotive, is 

 reported as finished at Baden Zurich. 

 — ►-♦-« — 

 In th3 January number of the American .Journal of 

 j Science, Mr. Clarence King has a paper on " The Age of 

 ! the Earth," in which he has applied some recent work in 

 geological physics to Lord Kelvin's reasoning as to the 

 probable rate at which the earth has cooled, and by this 

 I means he arrives at the value of twenty-four million years 

 for the earth's age. 



[ It has recently been decided in the American Supreme 

 I Court that a meteorite, though a stone fallen from heaven, 

 belongs to the owner of the freehold interest in the land 

 which it falls, and not to the tenant. 



on 



Wiedemann's Annalen contains an account of a number 

 of experiments made by Mr. Wesendonck to determine 

 whether electricity is produced by the friction of gases. 

 The results show that no electrification is produced by the 

 friction of pure gases, or of air freed from dust and 

 moisture, but only when solid or liquid particles are 

 suspended in them. 



It has recently been shown in Germany that light 

 exercises a deleterious action upon certain micro-organisms, 

 so that the natural purification of sewage matter in rivers 

 during their flow must be partly due to sunlight. Another 

 investigator has found that red rays favoured the growth 

 of certain bacteria, whilst violet rays acted prejudicially — 

 although less so than the white rays. 



It is well known that extreme cold paralyzes every vital 

 function, but Prof. Pictet has discovered that at a tempera- 

 ture of— 150^ C. no chemical action takes place between 

 nitric or sulphuric acid and potash, or between oxygen and 

 potassium, though, under ordinary circumstances, so great 

 is the affinity of the latter metal for oxygen that it will 

 burn if thrown into water, owing to its combination with 

 the oxygen in that fluid. 



