210 



NATURE 



[July 7, 1 88 



eastward as far as the Euphrates, but does not seem to 

 have descended below Balis, or to have ever been more 

 than two days' journey from Aleppo. On this tour the 

 traveller was mainly among half-settled tribes, and at the 

 season of his visit the great hordes of pure nomads who 

 sometimes pasture their flocks in the district had with- 

 drawn to the south. Of the authoi'^s excursion from 

 Damascus he gives no topographical detail. It was simply 

 a. visit to an encampment of the Eastern Anazeh. 



From the limited range of these journeys, and from the 

 fact that the writer made no exact observations except on 

 his favourite subject, it will readily be understood that 

 the book has little merit as a record of travel. Except in 

 the matter of horseflesh, Major Upton merely describes in 

 the loose manner of the amateur traveller whatever hap- 

 pened to amuse or strike him as he moved from place to 

 place. He is neither an archseologist nor a naturalist ; 

 and though there is no doubt a great deal still to be 

 learned about the less public customs even of the Arabs 

 of the Syrian desert, who have been often visited by good 

 observers, it is not surprising that Major Upton adds 

 nothing on this head to what has been given to us by 

 Burckhardt, and more recently by Lady Anne Blunt and 

 her husband. Some facts may perhaps be gleaned from 

 the remarks upon individual tribes and families, but even 

 here the book is inferior to Lady Anne Blunt' s " Bedouin 

 Tribes," while the proper names are printed in such an 

 inaccurate transcription that they must be used with 

 caution. 



Of the three parts into which the volume is divided the 

 first and a small part of the second are personal narrative. 

 The main bulk of the second part should have been alto- 

 gether cancelled, for it consists, not of gleanings from the 

 desert, but of gleanings from Pococke's "Specimen" and 

 the extracts from Abulfeda printed at the close of 

 White's edition of that work. The author, whose cre- 

 dulity is displayed in the earlier pages of the volume by 

 an excursus on the Great Pyramid, based on conversations 

 with a missionary of the Pyramid religion whom he met 

 going out to preach to the heathen, accepts the whole 

 mythical history of Arabia as sober fact, and as he has a 

 theory that it throws great light on the parallel history of 

 the Arabian horse, we are treated to some eighty pages of 

 abridgment and excerpts from Pococke (generally with- 

 out acknowledgment of the source). Unhappily, Major 

 Upton's knowledge of Latin is that of a backward school- 

 boy. He frequently misses the meaning of his author, 

 and, to make matters worse, the book has been so care- 

 lessly revised for press by the friend who undertook to 

 superintend the posthumous publication that inqnit 

 Jalalo'ddiiuis becomes inqtiib JahM dainus, El Makin, El 

 Maka, and so forth, while the words lingua Arabica qua 

 coelitus desceiidissc Alcoranus diciiur, with the marginal 

 note inAlcor. Sur. XVI. become "the Arabic language in 

 which the heaven-born .Alkoran is said to be descended in 

 Alk." The author is not stronger in Arabic than in Latin, 

 as may be judged from the fact that he derives Hijaz 

 from Hajar, a stone, and Kheil, the generic name of the 

 horse, from the pigment Kohl. No reliance therefore can 

 be placed on the transcription of Arabic words, and here 

 again errors of the press have conspired to produce results 

 truly appalling. Of the names of the seven mares of the 

 prophet, for example, not one is quite correct, and the 



errors include such monstrosities as Sekh for Sekb, Sizez 

 for Lizaz, Half for Lakhiq. In brief, everything that our 

 author derives from books, and all the historical and 

 geographical speculations which he is so fond of, are ab- 

 solutely worthless. This blemish affects even the third 

 part of the book, where Major Upton deals with his proper 

 subject, the horse. For his actual observations on the 

 strains of pure Arabian blood are hopelessly entangled 

 with fabulous legend and baseless theories. It is to be 

 observed, moreover, that he admits that his own reading 

 of the information derived from the Anazeh did not 

 always accord with the views of the friend who accom- 

 panied him on his journey, an inhabitant of the verge 

 of the desert, and long familiar with the Bedaween. Yet it 

 is clear that Major Upton's knowledge of Arabic was by 

 no means sufficient to enable him to take up an indepen- 

 dent position in such matters. Like most men with a 

 hobby, he had a theory to which facts must bend. But what 

 a theory ! Nothing less than a mythical history of the 

 Arabian horse, the purest strains of which he traces back 

 first to the time of David, when " the horses of his ances- 

 tors were entailed on " Rabi'atu-'l-faras, and then to 

 Salaman, the fourth in descent from Ishmael. That all 

 authentic notices of the horse in Arabia point to a com- 

 paratively late introduction of that quadruped is of course 

 indifferent to our author, who presumably had never 

 heard of the researches of Hehn, Guidi, and others in 

 this field. 



Probably no European except Mr. Blunt can speak 

 with real authority on the complicated subject of Arabian 

 horse-breeding. Major Upton however takes no notice 

 of what Mr. Blunt has written so well and fully on the 

 topic, and on points where the two accounts diverge the 

 uninitiated will hardly fail to prefer the clear and lucid 

 statements of one who saw far more of the desert and is 

 not biassed by theory. Lovers of the horse will however 

 peruse with interest Major Upton's notes on the charac- 

 teristic features of the Arabian breed illustrated by 

 descriptions of individual animals. 



W. Robertson Smith 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Easy Lessons in Botany, according to the Requirements of 

 the Revised Code, 1 88b. By the Author of " Plant Life." 

 (London : Marshall Japp and Co., iSSi.) 

 Neither better nor worse than the innumerable other 

 little books of the same kind. The morphological part 

 consists of the usual enumeration of descriptive terms, 

 with coarsely-executed diagrams. The histology and 

 physiology are very weak. The cell-nucleus is defined 

 (p. 27) to be " a portion of the protoplasm denser than the 

 rest," which may or may not be the case, but we are 

 further informed, which is a more doubtful statement, 

 that " it is this part of the protoplasm which grows." 

 The following is at any rate a dogmatic way of stating the 

 facts : — " By the addition of nitrogen and sulphur (taken 

 up in water by the roots) to the constituent parts of starch, 

 protoplasm has the power of forming alhumenoids " (sic). 

 If this is in accordance with the requirements of the 

 Revised Code it only shows what tyranny in science is 

 compatible with free institutions. On p. 32 we learn that 

 "carbonic acid gas . . . finds its way . . . into the s/>irai 

 vessels, which convey it to the cells of the iibro-vascular 

 bundles." Very good ; the Revised Code ought to know. 

 But surely as a matter of argument there is a screw loose 

 about the following sentence : — " As the store of albumen 



