3i6 



NATURE 



[July 31, 1890 



accurate on the whole : so faithful is it that Mr. Somerville 

 has omitted to correct Hartig's own mistake as to the 

 generic name of the teak, which reappears in the English 

 edition as Tectonia — surely the translator knows it should 

 be Tectona! 



The chief defects in the original pamphlet may be 

 summed up in that characters are relied on for distin- 

 guishing closely allied woods which do not serve the pur- 

 pose. For instance, the broad medullary rays, so called, 

 of the alder are a very treacherous guide ; and the admis- 

 sion that the wood of /Esculus " occupies a position mid- 

 way between " the hard and soft woods, itself shows how 

 useless the property of hardness is, as a class ^character, 

 unless defined in a rigid manner. 



Both the selection and the description of the seven 

 exotic timbers mentioned in the appendix are faulty, and 

 we are driven to the conclusion that there is room for a 

 much better book on the subject than the little pioneer 

 under review. As a pioneer, however, it is to be wel- 

 comed, with its useful, compact information, as well as its 

 failings. 



A dvanced Physiography {Physiographic A siroftojny) . B y 



John Mills. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1S90.) 

 The introductory part of this book is a reprint of the 

 elementary lessons in the subject by the same author 

 (Nature, vol. xlii. p. 76), and the remainder is intended 

 to meet the requirements of advanced students in con- 

 nection with the Science and Art examinations. The 

 new material constitutes a fair general outline of the 

 subject, but some of the descriptions suffer from want of 

 detail. There are also indications of the author's un- 

 familiarity with some parts of the subject. On p. 248, 

 for example, it is evident that the author is not well 

 acquainted with stellar nomenclature, as he does not 

 seem to be aware that Roman capitals are reserved for 

 recently discovered variable stars. Again, on p. 253, he 

 gives some figures relating to variable stars, which he 

 evidently does not understand ; he forgets to point out 

 that Dun^r's observations of stars were all of one spectro- 

 scopic group, and that the numbers given show that the 

 maximum of variability occurs in that particular group. 

 It should be an author's duty to use no term which he 

 has not explained, but on page i I4he refers to the moon's 

 mean horizontal parallax, although the meaning is not 

 even hinted at. 



The excellent plan of writing a head-line over each 

 important paragraph has been adopted, but has not 

 been employed consistently throughout. Thus, under 

 the heading " To weigh a planet having a satellite," we 

 find also a reference to the determination of the masses 

 of the moon and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn ; 

 and again, the chapter headed " Celestial Photography " 

 consists largely of terrestrial magnetism. 



The illustrations are numerous, but of varying quality ; 

 it is difficult to imagine what kind of telescope would give 

 such a view of the moon as that represented in Fig. 93. 



Travels in Africa. By Dr. Wilhelm Junker. Translated 

 from the German by A. H. Keane, F.R.G.S. (London : 

 Chapman and Hall, 1890.) 

 The work of which this is a translation records Dr. 

 Junker's experiences as a geographical explorer from the 

 year 1875 to 1878. Besides an excursion to the Siwa 

 Oasis and Natron Valley, it includes " a careful survey of 

 the B^raka watercourse, wanderings through Upper 

 Nubia, an expedition to the Sobat River, and numerous 

 journeys throughout Makaraka Land and surrounding 

 regions." It is to his later work that Dr. Junker chiefly 

 owes his fame as an explorer ; but in the present volume 

 he gives an account of many notable achievements, 

 and, as the translator points out, his descriptions of 

 Makaraka Land and neighbouring districts will supply 

 cartographers with plentiful material for filling up their 



NO. 1083, VOL. 42] 



blank spaces in an extensive region. Dr. Junker is a 

 good writer as well as a bold and scientific traveller, and 

 no one who begins to read his narrative will find it hard 

 to go on to the end. The translator has done his work 

 carefully, and the interest of the story is much increased 

 by a valuable map and many good illustrations. 



Selected Subjects in connection with the Surgery of 

 Infancy and Childhood. By Edmund Owen, M.B., 

 F.R.C.S. (London : Bailli^re, Tindall, and Cox, 1890.) 

 In this volume Dr. Owen has published (by request) the 

 Lettsomian Lectures delivered by him at the Medical 

 Society of London in the present year. The position of 

 Lettsomian Lecturer has been held by so many illustrious 

 members of the profession that he seems to have under- 

 taken .with diffidence the task entrusted to him. The 

 subjects with which he decided to deal have of late, as he 

 says, been attracting considerable attention ; and no one 

 can doubt that they are of great practical importance. 

 Dr. Owen discourses on them not only with learning, but 

 with the directness, clearness, and force that spring from 

 careful and long-continued observation. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[ The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. ^ 



The Correspondence on Russian Transliteration. 



As absence from England prevented our replying at the time 

 to the last letters on the system of Russian transliteration 

 proposed in Nature (vol. xli. p. 397), we thought it best to 

 delay reply till any further communications from foreign cor- 

 respondents had arrived. Since our last note (Nature, vol. 

 xli. p. 535) four letters have been received : — 



(i) Mr. Wilkins (Nature, May 22, p. 77) writes from 

 Tashkend to point out that the system fails to distinguish 

 between the few Russian words which differ only in their final 

 semi-vowel. This is quite correct, but could only be avoided 

 by the adoption of a separate symbol for each of these two 

 characters and their retention at the ends of words. The addi- 

 tion to the trouble of printing that this would involve would be 

 far more serious than the chance of error : krob, a roof, is hardly 

 more likely to be confused with krob, blood, than, in a quite 

 analogous case, is the German band, a volume, with band, a 

 ribbon. 



We do not accept Mr. Wilkins's criticism that ui does not 

 " even remotely" represent the sound of m. In the use of the 

 letter in such a word as IIo.iei.iB we fully admit that this is so ; but 

 in other cases, as after a labial, it seems to us to represent the 

 sound fairly well. Phonetically, Pribuilov (to take Mr. Wilkins's 

 own case) is not so exact as Pr^bu^lpfr, as the word would 

 probably be rendered by the elaborate refinements of the 

 " Historical English Dictionary" ; but even this is inadequate. 

 We despair of any correct phonetic rendering of Russian words 

 in English characters till a system is arranged on the lines of 

 Dr. Murray's ; and then the word would appear in some such 

 guise as Tirbus/^flft. Ui seems to us on the average, and cer- 

 tainly in the case chosen by Mr. Wilkins, a better phonetic 

 equivalent than y — a letter which is unfairly overworked in 

 nearly all systems of transliterations, and which we have 

 reserved exclusively for the double <■ ymbols ya, ye, yii. 



(2) Mr. Wilkins, and our second critic, Baron Osten-Sacken 

 (Nature, May 22, p. 77), agree in condemning the adoption 

 of zh for Ht. A strong case can no doubt be made out for the 

 claim of j to represent that letter, and zh was accepted (largely 

 on phonetic grounds) as one of those mutual concessions which 

 Baron Osten-Sacken commends, Zh has been largely used— 

 almost universally in America — and it represents the sound 

 better than the English 7. No doubt the French j oi jour is as 

 near to it as the zh sound in the word az[h)ure. As the system 

 proposed was intended for English-speaking countries we thought 

 it inadvisable to adopt a French sound for one letter. The 

 system is not so ambitious as Baron Osten-Sacken suggests it 



