3IO 



NA TURE 



[February i, 1894 



horses, carts, and drivers. The removal of such trifles as 

 foul straw and manure was deemed superfluous, and 

 through this I had to wade towards the door of a room, 

 and there wait till the coal in it was swept into a corner, 

 and what looked like a brewing apparatus removed. 



" There was no flooring, not even of bricks, and no 

 furniture, but at the end of the room was a kang, or 

 platform of loose boards, over what appeared to be an 

 ash-pit, though the cinders, no doubt, represented the 

 remains of fires for winter heating. Over this receptacle 

 for rubbish of various kinds I was to sleep and eat." 



Besides this, there was an intrusive crowd at the door 

 and window, a flour-mill at work, and the jingling of horse 

 and mule bells in the yard. " This went on all day ; and 

 what with the stench of manure, distracting noises, 

 windows unglazed, and inquisitive visitors, my lodging 

 proved to ht the worst I had ever had." One man 

 defended his intrusion on the traveller's privacy by ask- 

 ing, " Cannot I come into a room in my own country ? " 

 Here the author was invited to breakfast with Kab-i- 

 chang, the Commissary of Russo-Chinese affairs, where 

 he found a variety of dishes, including black putrid eggs, 

 a special delicacy in China. 



After leaving China, Dr. Lansdell crossed the Tian 

 Shan into Chinese Turkestan by the Muzart Pass, at a 

 height of 11,000 or 12,000 feet. Here the Chinese picket 

 did their best to smooth the way by laying boughs of trees 

 across crevasses, and covering them with blocks of ice, 

 for the men and horses to cross to the crest of the pass, 

 a nearly perpendicular ice clifif with steps cut in it, down 

 which horses are sometimes lowered by ropes ; but in 

 this case, one man took a horse's head, and another hung 

 on by the tail, and thus, wonderful to relate, they con- 

 trived to descend in safety. 



This formidable pass has, it appears, never been 

 crossed before by any European ; and from this point 

 Dr. Lansdell proceeded to Aksu, the most important 

 place on the way to Kashgar and Yarkand, where he 

 found much to interest him, including criminals wearing 

 the cangue, or wooden frame round the neck, a familiar 

 punishment in China. Thence he travelled to Kashgar, 

 passing, on the way, through a place called Maralbashi, 

 where the chief mandarin has a drum before his door, and 

 if this is struck, he is bound to attend at once to the 

 appeal of any suppliant. But, to avoid any trouble, if the 

 drum is struck, the mandarin orders the disturber of his 

 peace one hundred lashes, and then asks his business. 



From Kashgar Dr. Lansdell proceeded to Yarkand and 

 Khotan, and at the latter place he witnessed a dance of 

 dervishes, of which he gives an illustration. He was 

 anxious, at Khotan, as well as elsewhere, to take photo- 

 graphs of some of the native beauties, but having no 

 opportunity of seeing them unveiled, he was advised to 

 tell his landlord that he wanted a pretty wife, and to ask 

 him to bring him half a dozen on approval. 



Here and there v?e meet with occasional natural 

 history notes on collecting butterflies, or on birds, 

 &c. observed. For example, we read (vol. ii. p 

 270) : — " Of aquatic birds I obtained specimens of 

 the white-bellied dipper {Cinclus leucogaster) at Ak- 

 Shor, and afterwards at Tribhun. We often noticed this 

 little fisher boldly plunging into the swiftest torrents, 

 seeking insects in a stream the half of which was con- 

 gealed to solid ice." On the Kilian Pass, about the 

 NO. I 266, VOL. 49] 



height of Mont Blanc, Dr. Lansdell had his first experi- 

 ence of mountain sickness. He slid off his yak, and' 

 attempted to run up a hill to shoot partridges, but was 

 seized with palpitation of the heart, and was forced to sit 

 down to rest immediately. He appears to have suffered 

 more here than even on the great Karakorum Pass further 

 south (18,800 feet instead of 16,000). 



Thus our author gradually made his way to India, 

 where we will now leave him. There are so many de- 

 tached points of interest mentioned in his work, that our 

 limited space has only permitted us to select a fev/, here 

 and there, to show its interesting and varied character. 



The book is dedicated " To his August and Imperial 

 Majesty, the Emperor of China, &c., &c., &c." 



W. F. KiRBY. 



HUXLEY'S COLLECTED ESSAYS. 

 Collected Essays. By T. H. Huxley. Vol. I. " Methods 



and Results." (London : Macmillan and Co., 1893.) 

 T^HERE is probably no lover of apt discourse, of keen 

 criticism, or of scientific doctrine who will not 

 welcome the issue of Prof. Huxley's essays in the present 

 convenient shape. For my own part I know of no 

 writing which by its mere form, even apart from the 

 supreme interest of the matters with which it mostly 

 deals, gives me so much pleasure as that of the author of 

 these essays. In his case more than in that of his con- 

 temporaries it is strictly true that the style is the man. 

 Some authors we may admire for the consummate skill 

 with which they transfer to the reader their thought 

 without allowing him, even for a moment, to be con- 

 scious of their personality. In Prof. Huxley's work, on 

 the other hand, we never miss his fascinating presence : 

 now he is gravely shaking his head, now compressing 

 the lips with emphasis, and from time to time with a 

 quiet twinkle of the eye making unexpected apologies or 

 protesting that he is of a modest and peace-loving nature. 

 At the same time one becomes accustomed to a rare and 

 delightful phenomenon. Everything which has entered 

 the author's brain by eye or ear, whether of recondite 

 philosophy, biological fact or political programme, comes 

 out again to us —clarified, sifted, arranged, and vivified 

 by its passage through the logical machine of his strong 

 individuality. 



These essays were, he says in preface, " written for the 

 most part in the scant leisure of pressing occupations, or 

 in the intervals of ill-health." Though the oldest bears 

 the date of 1866, he finds, so far as their substance goes, 

 nothing to alter in them. " Whether," he concludes, 

 "that is evidence of the soundness of my opinions or of 

 my having made no progress in wisdom for the last 

 quarter of a century, must be left to the courteous reader 

 to decide." 



The first volume of the nine, which are to be issued 

 monthly, owes its title to the inclusion therein of the 

 famous essay " On Descartes' Discourse touching the 

 method of using one's reason rightly," and of samples of 

 the application of that method in various fields. Amongst 

 the latter are the essays on the physical basis of life, on 

 the hypothesis that animals are automata, on adminis- 

 trative nihilism, and on the natural inequality of men. 



