May 



1 90 1 



NA TURE 



element in this part of America. Nor is zoology by any 

 means neglected, Chapter xii. being devoted to an account 

 of the Californian marine fauna, illustrated with a photo- 

 graph of one of the remarkable Pacific hag-fishes of the 

 genus Bdellostoma, and a second of the Californian 

 medusa-starfish. Lo\ers of forest scenery will be en- 

 chanted with the beautiful photograph of a Sequoia-forest 

 in California, which forms the most striking feature in 

 the thirteeenth chapter ; this chapter dealing, not only 

 with the primeval forests of the district, but likewise 

 with the timber-felling industry. 



In his concluding chapter, Dr. Doflein presents his 

 readers with a capital account of the Yellowstone Park 

 and its animal wonders, illustrating his description with 

 an excellent photograph of a family party of black bears 

 in their native wilds. The photograph of bisons is. how- 

 ever, by no means so successful as it might be, being, 

 for one thing, on much too small a scale. Still more 

 unsatisfactory is the one on page 175 lettered " Die 

 Amerikanische Gemse (Weibchen)," which is intended 

 to portray the female of the prongbuck. If we are not 

 mistaken, the animal in the foreground is a wapiti hind, 

 while the one in the middle distance might be anything. 



To any English reader desirous of keeping up his 

 German by the perusal of a pleasantly written narrative 

 of travel, Dr. Dofiein's work may be commended ; to his 

 own countrymen it will commend itself. R. L. 



A BIBLICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA. 

 Encyclopaedia Biblica, Critical Dictionary of the 

 Literary., Political and Religious History, the 

 Archaeology, Geography and Natural History of the 

 ■ Bible. Edited by Prof T. K. Cheyne and Dr. J. 

 Sutherland Black. Vol. ii. E— K. (A. and C. Black, 

 1 90 1.) Price 20s. net. 



A WORK like this demands a critic whose forte is 

 omniscience, for the articles are written by men 

 who can speak as authorities, and necessarily enter into 

 questions of theology, a province of human thought with 

 which science is only indirectly concerned. This alone 

 makes it difficult to give any notice of the book in a 

 publication strictly scientific. To read through a volume 

 of 1544 closely printed columns of small type would 

 be a herculean task which we do not pretend to have 

 attempted. We have not perused more than a few of 

 the salient articles in the present volume, which, as 

 it contains the letters from E to K, happens to include 

 a large number of exceptional interest. If we remember 

 that even the letter J covers names such as James^ 

 Jasher, Jeremiah, Jerusalem, Jesus, Job, John, Jordan, 

 Joshua, Joseph, Judah and Judges we realise the signi- 

 ficance of many articles. These seem to be summaries 

 of everything important that has been written on the 

 subject. Indeed, sometimes the variety is a little be- 

 wildering to the ordinary reader, who, however, cannot 

 complain of a stinted choice, though the write;"s generally 

 favour views distinctly progressive. One or two slips, 

 notwithstanding the care with which, obviously, the 

 work has been done, have caught our eye, such as the 

 statement that the vicinity of Jerusalem consists of strata 

 of the Eocene and Chalk formations — where Cretaceous 

 should have been written, as the limestone is not the 

 XO. 1644, VOL. 64] 



variety designated chalk ; or the obvious clerical error that 

 Esdraelon lies 250 feet below the sea-level, which would 

 make it difficult for the river Kishon to reach the Medi- 

 terranean. But the topographical articles, which of 

 course have to be largely dealt with from the historical 

 point of view, are generally exce llent. For instance, the 

 article " Geography" gives a most interesting account of 

 what was known about that subject by the Old Testament 

 writers. Formerly, no doubt, when the relations of 

 theology and science were ill-understood, questions of 

 Hebrew cosmogony and ethnology were more important 

 than they now are ; still there is an antiquarian interest, 

 when the date of a document can be approximately deter- 

 mined, to see how much or how little the Hebrews had 

 ascertained about the rest of the world. Evidently the 

 knowledge of the Old Testament writers hardly extended 

 eastward beyond Persia, or northward so far as the 

 Caucasus, or southward beyond Ethiopia on the African 

 continent, or westward of Greece, excepting Tartessus in 

 Spain or possibly either Sicily or Carthage. If they had 

 any notions of regions lying beyond those limits, such as 

 India or China, these must have been of the vaguest, 

 unless we locate Ophir in Mashonaland, to which identi- 

 fication, however, as we infer from the article on gold, 

 the editor does not incline. The books of the Old 

 Testament cover a long time, and knowledge grew ; but 

 we may safely assume that the writer of the ethno- 

 graphical notices in Genesis x., whatever be their date, 

 either did not know of, or deliberately excluded, the Black 

 and the Yellow races. Probably, indeed, until about the 

 tenth century before our era, the Hebrews had only a very 

 limited knowledge of geography. The article on Egypt 

 is full of information and has been brought down as 

 nearly as possible to date. It is accompanied by three 

 very useful little maps ; one, a physical map of the Nile 

 valley, north of Khartoum, another, on a smaller scale, 

 of the Nile and the Euphrates, and a third showing the 

 broader features of the geology. This brings out very 

 clearly the close connection between the Sinaitic peninsula 

 and the mountain region between the river and the Red 

 Sea, and contains much information in a very small space. 

 .A comparison of the historical part of this article with 

 that in Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible," published in 

 i860, indicates, better than anything, how enormously 

 our knowledge has been increased during recent years. 

 The same is true in regard to the articles on the 

 topography of Jerusalem. No doubt the one in the 

 older work was below the general level, for the editor, 

 owing to some strange infatuation, had accepted as es- 

 tablished facts the absurd fancies of the late Mr. James 

 Fergusson. These are properly ignored in the work 

 before us, which treats this difficult and thorny subject in 

 a fair and scholarly fashion. The author may sometimes 

 incline to one view, the reader to another, but evidence 

 is not perverted as it was in the older work. Personally, 

 for instance, we do not believe the Ophel Hill to have 

 been the site of the City of David. The passages sup- 

 posed to be favourable to this identification are not, in 

 our opinion, of much weight, and the distance of Jebus 

 from any known spring is a difficulty which attaches to 

 many hill forts. Some in our own country could not 

 have endured a close siege for a few days without storage 

 of water, and cisterns were familiar things at Jerusalem. 



