594 



NA TURE 



[October 22, 1903 



lished his " Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the 

 Ancients " in 1862, he threw cold water upon the 

 attempts which had then been made to decipher the 

 cuneiform inscriptions. He died the year after, just 

 forty years ago last spring; had he survived until now, 

 very different would have been the line which he must 

 have taken. The wealth of the material since accumu- 

 lated has made it impossible to reject the conclusions of 

 Assyriologists, and though some of the early attempts 

 have necessarily been modified, we have enormous 

 results now in our hands from the library of Assur- 

 hanipal and other sources which cannot in the main 

 be gainsaid. The consequences are indirect as well 

 as direct. For if the Assyrian and Babylonian 

 calendars are so ancient, there is no longer any reason 

 to call in question the antiquity also of those of India, 

 or to suppose that they derived this knowledge from 

 the Greeks, who themselves express great respect for 

 the Indian lore. 



Now, with regard to the Chineses, if we may follow 

 th? obsolete, but perfectly correct, form used by Milton 

 (" Paradise Lost," iii., 438), Miss Plunket's chapter 

 on their calendar-system is worthy, like the rest of her 

 book, of careful perusal. In China the year is now 

 tropical, and does not begin either at the winter 

 solstice or the vernal equinox, but at a time midway 

 between these. But the Gregorian length of the 

 calendar-year was really introduced into that country 

 by some Jesuit fathers who obtained great influence 

 at the Chinese Court early in the seventeenth 

 century. The date used as that of the com- 

 mencement of the year began much earlier. Their 

 •old reckoning was reformed by the Emperor Tchuen 

 about the year corresponding to B.C. 2500, and many 

 indications point to the conclusion that it originally 

 Siegan, like the x\ccadian calendar, at the winter 

 solstice about b.c. 6000. Miss Plunket comments on 

 .the circumstance that this is two thousand years before 

 ;the creation of man according to the Ussherian 

 .chronology, formerly inserted in the margins of our 

 Bibles ; but she rightly remarks that a consideration 

 of the variations of the readings in diflferent ancient 

 versions has shown that no reliance can be placed on 

 the Ussher theory, and his dates are accordingly not 

 inserted in the margin of our revised version. 



On one point it may be worth while to take exception 

 'to a remark by our author about the Julian reform- 

 ation. There is every reason to believe that it was then 

 'known that the true length of the year was several 

 minutes short of 365^ days, but Caesar probably 

 thought the insertion of a bissextile every fourth year 

 was near enough for all practical purposes. It was 

 unfortunate that his rule was at first misunderstood. 

 ^But Pope Gregory, in 1582, not only ordered certain 

 future centurial leap-years to be dropped, but omitted 

 ten days from the calendar that the vernal equinox 

 (and other seasons) might fall as at the epoch of the 

 Council of Nicaea. Miss Plunket concludes these 

 chapters by once more directing attention to the 

 identity of the earliest astronomical traditions of the 

 nations of the east, which suggests matter for reflec- 

 tion. Her book is excellently illustrated throughout, 

 but the second part consists of a series of illustrations 

 •of ancient constellations wuth descriptive letterpress; 

 NO. 1773. VOL. 68] 



although we have not space to enter into this at 

 length, we cannot refrain from mentioning the in- 

 genious suggestion that the position of Pegasus was 

 originally upright, the horse striking the vase of 

 Aquarius with his hoof (p. 251). The whole is very 

 carefully printed, and a full index is provided. 



W. T. L. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY. 

 A Laboratory Manual of Physiological Chemistry. 

 By Ralph W. Webster, M.D., Ph.D., and Walde- 

 mar Koch. Pp. 107; 21 plates. (Chicago: the 

 University of Chicago Press ; London : William 

 Wesley and Son, 1903.) Price 6s. 6d. net. 



THE introduction to this manual is written by 

 Dr. A. P. Mathews. He dwells upon the rapid 

 development of physiological chemistry, and the efforts 

 which are being made to bring it into closer touch 

 with the biological sciences. He therefore considers 

 it necessary that the science should be presented in a 

 broader way than has hitherto been the case, and 

 implies that the present manual meets this require- 

 ment. I therefore proceeded to study the work 

 with considerable expectations of profit, especially 

 when I considered that it was an outcome from 

 the laboratories of the University of Chicago, which 

 have, in recent years, produced so much of original 

 and valuable work in various physiological fields. 



I have closed the book with a feeling of great 

 disappointment. The ideal the authors have set 

 before them has not been realised ; in fact, it is not 

 often I have read a book which is so full of 

 faults. It has a few good points; every teacher can 

 always learn something from other teachers ; the 

 idea of inserting a chapter on the general characters 

 of the cell, taking yeast as an example, is a good 

 one; the directions given for the examination of 

 milk from the sanitary standpoint form a new and 

 useful departure in such text-books. In several other 

 particulars, a competent teacher will glean some 

 useful hints in adding to or amending his repertory of 

 class exercises. 



It was, however, for the student that the book was 

 originally written, and for him it Is practically useless. 



From some points of view the work is a pretentious 

 one, giving Information on complex subjects which 

 Indicate a desire on the part of the authors to be con- 

 sidered up to date ; but this character is lamentably 

 lacking on many questions where one should have ex- 

 pected to find recent and important work described in 

 detail ; thus there Is no reference to work of Bayliss 

 and Starling on the pancreas, no mention of the dis- 

 tinctions between the euglobullns and pseudoglobulins, 

 and the description of the urinary pigments is hope- 

 lessly out of date. 



The arrangement of the exercises may be logical as 

 the preface states, but it is absolutely unpractical. For 

 Instance, the first exercises the student is set to work 

 out are the preparation of lecithin and cholesterin from 

 the yolk of the egg. The egg may be the starting 

 point of life, but the complicated methods necessary 

 for the obtaining of a complex fat like lecithin hardly 



