484 
WWE ORE 
| Marcu 25, 1897 
doubt that nearly every nation belonging to the ancient 
civilised world has connected trees with its objects of 
veneration ; and many folk have openly admitted that 
they regarded them as holy things, and that, in conse- 
quence, they have performed sacred rites and ceremonies 
beneath and near them. Many interesting details of the 
subject have been collected by such indefatigable in- 
vestigators as Prof. E. B. Tylor, Mr. Frazer, and the 
late Prof. Robertson Smith ; but, as far as we remember, 
no one before Mrs. Philpot has taken the pains to reduce 
the commoner facts to a simple straightforward narra- 
tive such as she gives in the volume before us. Here we 
have ‘in nine chapters a brief sketch of tree worship, 
which begins in times almost prehistoric, when the 
suppliant knelt in terror before the solitary tree or in the 
forest, and ends with the Christmas-tree round which 
children and adults gather joyfully. 
To illustrate her points Mrs. Philpot introduces several 
well-chosen drawings, and a somewhat meagre index 
ends the book. It is evident that Mrs. Philpot’s work 
is intended for all such as have not made a special study 
of tree-lore, and to them her little treatise will be of the 
greatest value; for, apart from the general accuracy of 
her facts, her story is told with a directness which, to say 
the least of it, is time-saving. Her references are, how- 
ever, either [too many or too few ; personally we should | 
have liked them to be increased in number, for when a 
reader likes a book, and is told in it where to go for 
further information, he sometimes goes, and thus know- 
ledge is spread, and more people are induced to take an 
interest in that particular subject. On certain points, 
too, Mrs. Philpot might have given us more information 
with little increased labour. Thus, in speaking of tree 
worship in Babylonia (p. 7), we might with advantage 
have been told that Rim-Sin, a king of Babylonia about 
B.C. 2300, calls himself “magician of the holy tree of 
Eridu,” and also that a cuneiform inscription actually 
describes this tree “with its root of crystal which 
stretcheth to the abyss.” On p. to, the “sacred tree of 
Heliopolis,” of which Mrs. Philpot speaks, is, of course, 
the famous Persea tree near which the Cat (7.e. the Sun) 
slew the serpent of darkness ; both Cat and Tree are de- 
picted in the vignette which accompanies the seventeenth 
chapter of the “Book of the Dead.” In the same city, 
too, flourished the famous olive tree which is mentioned 
in the text of the pyramid of Unas (line 70), inscribed 
about B.c. 3500. The Tamarisk tree (Asev), which is 
mentioned in the forty-second chapter, and the Cedar 
tree, which plays such an important part in the “ Tale of 
the Two Brothers,’ should also have been noticed. In 
seme cases a little more information might well have been 
given to the reader. Thus, the Arabs believed that 
the Taba tree (see p. 132) was specially created by God 
along with the Throne, and the Garden of Eden, and 
Adam ; this statement is important, for it shows that the 
Muhammedans could not imagine Paradise without a tree. 
The account of Alexander’s visit to the trees of the 
Sun and Moon in India, not Persia, should have been 
taken from Alexanders letter to Aristotle as given 
in Pseudo-Callisthenes (ed. Miller, Book iii.), for the 
Persian translation, or rather version, modifies a great 
deal of it, and omits many important points. On the 
vreat trees of India and Africa the histories of Mastdi 
NO. 1430, VOL. 55] 
(ii. 81-83) and Ibn-Batuta (iv. 391 f.)—both available in 
good French translations—might have been consulted, 
and Mrs. Philpot would have derived scores of valuable 
hints about trees and their worship from Yule’s edition 
of ‘Ser Marco Polo,” vol. i. (2nd ed.). The four cross- 
bars of the Tet-pillar (p. 117) are in reality four pillars, 
of which only the tops are seen, and these represent 
the four cardinal points ; the late Mr. O’Neill’s “ Night of 
the Gods” contains many facts relating to the universe- 
tree or pillar. The pillar which joins the two paradises 
(p. 132) is not called “strength of the Hill of Sion,” 
but “foundation (7é&hd) of the Hill of Sion.” Among 
proofs of the beliefs in the existence of a “tree of life” 
at a very early period may be mentioned one which 
occurs in the text of the pyramid of Pepi I., where we 
read that the deceased goes to the great lake round 
which the gods sit, and that they give him to eat of the 
tree of life upon which they themselves do live; now 
these words were inscribed about B.C. 3500, and it is 
more than probable that they were first written many, 
many centuries before that date. 
We do not call attention to these facts from any wish 
to find fault, but only to indicate the sources whence 
Mrs. Philpot may derive additional information when a 
second edition of her book is called for. We believe 
that her book will be read with pleasure by many, but 
it would greatly help the general reader to give him 
definite facts and figures which he could remember and 
think upon after he has closed the book. 
OUR BOOK SHELF. 
Relics of Primeval Life. By Sir J. Willam Dawson, 
K.C.M.G., F.R.S. Pp. xiv + 336. (London: Hodder 
and Stoughton, 1897.) 
FOR more than thirty-five years Eozoon Canadense has 
been before geologists, and the evidence brought forward 
in support of its organic nature, and against it, has been 
sufficient to enable people competent to judge the ques- 
tion to arrive at a firm conclusion one way or the other. 
The case for Eozoon as a Laurentian fossil is stated by 
Sir William Dawson in this volume, and the observation 
of similar characteristics in decidedly mineral structures 
is either ingeniously explained, or the resemblance is 
declared to be illusory. The work represents the sub- 
stance of a course of lectures on Pre-Cambrian fossils, 
delivered in the Lowell Institute, Boston, and will be 
read as much for the account it contains of early animal 
life, as for the debatable matters with which it deals. 
The True Grasses. By Eduard Hackel.. Translated 
from ‘Die Natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien” by F. 
Lamson-Scribner and Effie A. Southworth. Pp. 228. 
8vo, with rro illustrations in the text. (Westminster: 
Archibald Constable and Co., 1896.) 
THIS appears to be a very good translation of a work 
which does not materially differ from Bentham and 
Hooker’s ‘‘ Genera Plantarum,” except that the diagnoses 
are much briefer, though, on the other hand, they are sup- 
plemented by some figures which, by the way, are printed 
much too black. What part Effie Southworth took in 
the translation is not apparent, for the preface is signed 
by F. Lamson-Scribner, dating from the University of 
Tennessee, without any mention of the former. In fact, 
the book was first published in America. It is important 
to state that some botanical knowledge is necessary to 
enable a person to use the book, and also that, with the 
exception of the cereals anda few others only the genera 
