242 



NA TURE 



\_July 12, 1883 



ORIGINES CELTICS 



Origines Celticce (a Fragment), and other Contributions 

 to the History of Britain. By Edwin Guest. Two 

 Vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883.) 



A MAN'S foes are indeed those of his own household. 

 More than one literary or scientific reputation has 

 been injured by the injudicious zeal of a writer's friends 

 to publish after his death the fragments and papers he 

 has left behind. It is natural to imagine that the work 

 and suggestions of a scholar must all be equally valuable, 

 and that by omitting to print any portion of it the world 

 may be a loser. But it must be remembered on the other 

 side that a good deal which a scientific worker commits 

 to manuscript is never intended to see the light, and that 

 in any case it is unfair to him to publish fragmentary 

 remains which he has never had the chance of revising 

 and correcting. 



Dr. Guest's name is deservedly one of power among 

 all those who have interested themselves in the earlier 

 history of our country. His papers on the Invasion of 

 Britain by Julius Caesar, on the Campaign of Aulus 

 Plautius, on the Four Roman Ways, and on the Saxon 

 Conquests in Britain, are all models of sound scholarship 

 and careful method. Dr. Freeman acknowledges him as 

 a master, and declares that " whenever they meet on the 

 same ground, he ranks above Palgrave and Kemble." 

 Friends and public alike, therefore, might have expected 

 to find in the fragments of his unfinished work, " Origines 

 Celticae," a fresh monument to his historical sagacity and 

 another contribution of importance to the ethnology of 

 our islands. 



But friends and public alike must be grievously disap- 

 pointed by what is actually placed before them. It would 

 have been far better to spare the paper and ink that has 

 been expended upon it, and, what is of more consequence, 

 the fair fame of the author himself. The " Origines 

 Celtics," which occupy the whole of the first volume and 

 the opening pages of the second volume of Dr. Guest's 

 posthumous works are a barren waste of unscientific 

 theorising and uncritical collection of facts. The work 

 carries us back to an age when the application of the 

 scientific method to history was unknown, when ethnology 

 and comparative philology were as yet undreamt of, and 

 when the most amazing generalisations were built on the 

 chance coincidence of proper names. In our search for 

 the fathers of the Kelts we are transported to the Cau- 

 casus, to Egypt, and even to Ur of the Chaldees, and no 

 shadow of doubt is allowed to cross the mind that Kim- 

 merians and Kimbrians and Kymry are all one and the 

 same people. The fact that there were Iberians in 

 Georgia and Iberians in Spain is considered quite suffi- 

 cient to prove that the early population of the Spanish 

 Peninsula came from the sources of the Euphrates. 



Dr. Guest's philology is as wild as his ethnology. He 

 has heard of " Grimm's Laws" ; but as their existence is 

 inconvenient to his own etymological mode of procedure 

 he denounces both the "laws" and their observers, 

 though without understanding what they really mean. 

 When Indo-European philology is treated in this way it 

 is not surprising that the Rutennu of the Egyptian in- 

 scriptions are connected with the Assyrians of Resen, that 

 initial k and h are said to interchange in Phcenician, or 



that an Egyptian settlement in Kolkhis is declared to 

 admit of " no reasonable doubt." 



Dr. Guest's turn of mind, in fact, was literary rather 

 than scientific. Wherever the question was a purely 

 literary one, he displayed erudition, patience, and common 

 sense ; where, on the contrary, it was ethnological or 

 philological, he showed himself as helpless as a Jewish 

 rabbi. The old well-threshed >tatements of Greek and 

 Latin writers are heaped together, and tricked out here 

 and there with references to the discoveries of Egyptian 

 and Assyrian research. How little he knew of the latter, 

 however, may be judged from the frequent mistakes he 

 makes when appealing to them, as when, for instance, he 

 insists on calling Sumer Sommari, or tells us that Assur- 

 bani-pal lived in the ninth century B.C. 



Had the "Origines Celtics " appeared a hundred 

 years ago they would have been hailed as a profoundly 

 learned and interesting book. There is no place for 

 them in an age when the departments of knowledge with 

 which they deal have been occupied by the method and 

 spirit of inductive science. To know what Dr. Guest 

 really was and of what he was really capable we must 

 turn to the papers reprinted in the second volume of his 

 remains, though even here we shall from time to time be 

 reminded of the literary spirit which accepts what is not 

 disproved rather than of the scientific spirit which doubts 

 everything and holds fast only to that which is proved. 



A. H. SAYCE 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Handbook of Vertebrate Dissection. Part II. " How to 

 Dissect a Bird." By H. Newell Martin, D.Sc, M.D., 

 M.A., and William' A. Moale, M.D. (New York : 

 Macmillan and Co., 1883.) 



Some months ago we noticed in these columns (vol. xxvii. 

 p. 335) the first of a series of Handbooks of Vertebrate 

 Dissection, by Drs. Martin and Moale — " How to Dissect 

 a Chelonian." The second, " How to Dissect a Bird," 

 has now appeared, and, as the type selected is the pigeon, 

 this volume will doubtless be appreciated by a large 

 number of students. 



The general arrangement of the book is much the 

 same as that of its predecessor, directions being given 

 how to proceed step by step, so that the student, with its 

 aid, ought to be able to gain a good knowledge of the 

 anatomical characters of a bird. The skeleton, in par- 

 ticular, is described in great detail, and there are four 

 good figures and a diagram of the skull, as well as a 

 figure of the hind limb. It is, however, to be regretted 

 that there are no illustrations of the soft parts, for figures 

 of the skeleton — at any rate of allied forms — can be got 

 in almost any text-book on Comparative Anatomy, while 

 satisfactory drawings of the viscera, &c, are not so easily 

 obtainable. 



The directions are on the whole excellent, with one or 

 two slight exceptions. The description of the air-sacs, 

 for instance, is very indefinite, and gives no idea of their 

 true relations. If the authors had glanced through Prof. 

 Huxley's recent paper on the subject in the Proceedings 

 of the Zoological Society, and compared the air-sacs of 

 the pigeon with the description there given, there is no 

 doubt that the position of these structures and their rela- 

 tions to the lungs would have been stated more clearly. 



We must also call attention to the following points, 

 which are not very accurate : — 



Only one pancreatic duct is described instead of three. 



The inferior mesenteric artery, instead of the median 

 sacral, is stated to be the termination of the aorta. 



