554 



NA TURE 



[.Al'KlL 13, I<S99 



directions, but he is at any rate a scholar who works 

 on a scientific method, and the mass of evidence he 

 has accumulated must be either accepted or refuted by 

 any subsequent writer on the subject. Mr. Brown, 

 however, is not concerned with such a prosaic pursuit 

 as the weighing of evidence. To his eyes all beasts 

 and birds on coins assume a stellar aspect, and are at 

 once classified in his book as " constellational " ; in fact 

 he believes he has discovered that constellation-figures 

 " simply swarm " in coin-types (p. 239). Similarly he 

 has no difficulty in finding " constellational subjects " in 

 Schliemann's finds at Tiryns and Hissarlik, in the 

 "Hittite" hieroglyphs, and in Mr. Evans's Cretan pic- 

 tographs. -Such wholesale assertions are not evidence, 

 and all that is needed to refute them is a little common 

 sense. 



Mr. Brown's method of work with regard to his other 

 conviction, which is developed in the earlier part of his 

 volume, is equally simple, though it might not seem to be 

 so from the learned appearance of his pages. He takes 

 Ptolemy's catalogue of stars from the .-Mmagest, and for 

 each constellation proceeds to find some star or deity 

 known to the Akkadians, Babylonians or Phcenicians, to 

 which he may equate it. In the present state of know- 

 ledge on this subject, such comparisons, if undertaken by 

 a competent scholar, would necessarily be made in a very 

 tentative manner, and only after a thorough acquaintance 

 at first hand with the literatures and inscriptions of the 

 nations concerned. Mr. Brown has no misgivings, and 

 finds his equations with the greatest ease ; in the process, 

 however, he proves that his knowledge of the languages 

 he quotes is not obtained at first hand, and that he has 

 not sufficiently qualified himself for his task. He is 

 careful to state that in the spelling of names he adopts 

 " the original forms, because they are the most correct " ; 

 he follows this plan, he tells us, even at the risk of 

 being accused of pedantry, for he does not hold with 

 those " who think that Time can consecrate error and 

 canonise ignorance." Thus he writes " Babylon '' and 

 " Euphrates," and refers to Uarius as " Darayavaush." 

 Mr. Brown, however, was not well advised to adopt so 

 high a standard, for in seeking to attain it he has fallen 

 into a good many errors of his own making. For 

 instance, he incorrectly writes " Tukulti-pal-esar " (p. 47) 

 for Tukulti-pal-Eshara when Tiglath-pileser would have 

 done equally well ; and in referring to Borsippa as 

 " Barsipki " (p. 327) he has transliterated the deter- 

 minative particle ki as though it were a syllable of the 

 name. His references to Hebrew, I'htL-nician and 

 Assyrian words, moreover, show that he is not acquainted 

 with these languages, for he unwittingly makes use of 

 quite different systems of transliteration. When citing 

 the Hebrew for "serpent" as "nukhAsch" (pp. 29, 119, 

 &c.), and when referring to the Phrcnioian deity 

 "Eschmun" (p. 168), he is evidently drawing on some 

 German work ; while elsewhere he renders the Hebrew 

 and Phoenician sound sh in the ordinary English method ; 

 similarly the Assyrian for "heaven" is not same (p. 57), 

 nor same-(p. 269), nor sami (p. 287), but shame. Mr. Brown 

 gets into a good many difficulties with his sibilants m 

 quoting .\ssyrian words ; he states in his preface that 

 instead of using diacritical marks he employs kh. Is and 

 NO. 1537. VOL. 59] 



sh, yet he cites the Assyrian for "king" as sari 

 (pp. 34, 62, iStc.) instead of sharru ; he translates th 

 relative pronoun as sa instead of sha {passim), he write 

 saplitu for shapUlu (p. 116), risHor rishi (p. 81), sail 

 for shall! (p. 267), Gilgames for Gilgamesh (p. 46), Santa 

 for Shamash (passim), &c. Now Prof. Sayce, in hi 

 popular works on Assyrian, purposely makes no di^ 

 tinction between his sibilants — a very reprehensibl' 

 practice according to Mr. Brown's preface, and w( 

 venture to offer Mr. Brown our sincere sympathy foi 

 having himself, through ignorance of this fact, helped t( 

 "consecrate and canonise" so many errors. 



Mr. Brown, however, makes worse mistakes thai 

 these, for he really ought to know there is no h either ir 

 Assyrian or in Akkadian, and he might be expected tf 

 know the difference between a consonantal and a 

 quiescent hi! in Heljrew ; moreover, he seems ignorant 

 of the construct state, and appears to be unaware of the 

 fact that you cannot have a long vowel in a closed 

 syllable in Hebrew- unless it has the tone. These would 

 be bad blunders in a beginner, and are scarcely expected 

 in the work of a comparative philologist ; it is hardly 

 necessary to follow Mr. Brown further in his numerous 

 philological comparisons. 



We have, perhaps, devoted more space to this book 

 than it deserves, though we have not mentioned more 

 than a few of the extraordinary blunders we have come 

 across during its perusal. The manufacture of books of 

 this nature can surely serve no useful purpose. 



LIFE ON AN ATOLL. 



Fiina/iili, or Three Monlhs on a Coral Island ; an L'n- 



scienlific Account of a Scienlific E.xpedilion. By Mrs. 



Edgeworth David. Pp. xvi -I- 318. With Portraits, 



Map, and Illustrations. (London: John Murray, 1S99.) 



MRS. D.WID accompanied her husband on the 

 second boring expedition to the atoll of Funa- 

 futi, when, under his directions, a depth of 643 feet was 

 attained. The island is one of the EUice group, lying 

 about 8' south of the equator, almost due north of Fiji, 

 and so nearly half a hemisphere away from London. 

 Selected by the Coral Reef lioring Committee of the 

 Royal .Society as a typical atoll, the chain of islands, 

 of which it is composed, takes an outline which 

 roughly resembles that of a shoulder of mutton, and 

 encloses a lagoon about eleven miles in diameter. 



Funafuti itself lies on the eastern side, a long, lo" 

 narrow island, composed wholly of coral and othr 

 organisms. It possesses a king and a native pastor ; ;i 

 church, a school-house, and even a royal residence ; the 

 latter, however, are edifices of the humblest kind, and it 

 does not yet boast of an hotel or a lodging-house, so 

 Mrs. David and the Professor took up their quarters in 

 a native hut just outside the village. This had its ad- 

 vantages and its drawbacks ; it was well ventilated, but 

 not always rainproof, and the domestic life was too 

 open to inspection; for the Funafutian is as inquisitive 

 as a child. " Fancy living, bathing, feeding, and sleeping 

 in a one-roomed house with unhung door-spaces ; a 

 house with mat walls that are being constantly lifted by 

 little brown hands, to let in little brown heads, with big 



