530 



NA TURE 



[Aprils, 1886 



side of /icr clan. Even now, among the Bedouins, a 

 woman, it seems, rarely leaves her tribe, but strangers 

 readily marry and settle in the tribe of their brides. 



In the fourteenth century, a wife of the women of 

 Zebia would never follow a stranger husband, avid she 

 kept the children. The women of the Jahilya had the 

 right to dismiss their husband, /he tent was theirs. 

 Ammianus mentions the gift of the wife to the bride- 

 groom, a spear and a tent, he dwelt in her tent, and 

 followed her people to the washing of spears. All this 

 means bcciid marriage, as it is called in Ceylon. In 

 marriages by capture, necessarily, the opposite rule pre- 

 vailed. A woman went with the husband to his people, 

 he is her lord, or ba'al, and thus ba\il marriage is the 

 reverse of /;^^;/(Z marriage. Purchase of wives naturally 

 produced marriages of a ba'al type. As the two latter 

 forms of marriage prevailed, women lost that independ- 

 ence in the wedded condition which they had enjoyed 

 under bcena marriage, thanks to the kindred of their own 

 blood who surrounded them. Prof Robertson Smith 

 goes on to show the existence of various shapes of poly- 

 andry in early Arabia ; there were " small sub-groups 

 having property and wives in common as in Tibetan 

 polyandry." In short, at the Prophet's time, the Arabs 

 had already the orthodox family system with a pater- 

 familias, but previously there had been a system with a 

 materfamilias, the house and children were hers, succes- 

 sion was through mothers, and the husband came to the 

 wife, not the wife to the husband. The end of the book 

 (Chapters VII. and VIII.) deals with traces and survivals 

 of totemism. A list of tribal names derived from animals 

 is given : the evidence that tlie animals were totems, 

 worshipful, and not to be slain or eaten, is, naturally, 

 scanty. In fact, though the analogies strongly point to 

 the existence of totemism at a remote period in Arabia, I 

 do not think the evidence will have much effect on the 

 minds of the people who dismiss totems with the remark 

 that thej' should be spelled otcs or otems. A note (2, p. 

 221, see p. 304) is more to the point and more convincing. 

 This note is of great religious interest and importance. 



The tendency of the book, on the whole, is to show that 

 among the Semitic races, as among Red, Black, and Yellow- 

 men, the matriarchal preceded the patriarchal family, 

 and the totem kindred preceded the i;;ens. That is pre- 

 cisely what one believes, but it is not in this generation 

 that the doctrine will be universally accepted. In the 

 case of .Vrabia proof is peculiarly difficult, as the reforms 

 of the Prophet did so much to veil the remains of earlier 

 religion and custom. It would be superfluous to praise a 

 book so leirned and masterly as Prof. Robertson Smith's ; 

 it is enough to say that no student of early history can 

 afford to be without " Kinship in Early Arabia." 



Andrew L.\ng 



FIELD'S CHROMATOGRAPHY 



Field's Chromatography ; a Treatise on Colours and Pig- 



ments,for the Use of Artists. Modernised by J. Scott 



Taylor, B.A. (London: Winsor and Newton, 1SS5.) 



The Artists' Manual of Pigments. By H. C. Standage. 



(London : Crosby Lockwood and Co., 1SS6.) 

 'p HE new edition of " Field's Chromatography" differs 

 in two im])ortant particulars from the previous issues 

 of this well-known treatise. Firstly, one-third of the 



volume is devoted to a discussion of such parts of the 

 modern theory of chromatics as bear upon the practice of 

 the painter ; secondly, a large number of useless or dis- 

 used pigments and of substances suggested for use as 

 pigments have been excluded from the pages before us. 

 In accuracy and compactness this hand-book has un- 

 doubtedly been much improved, but it affords the student 

 very little information upon two of the most important 

 aspects in which artists should study their paints — those, 

 namel)', of purity and permanence. For instance, we are 

 informed on p. 72 that " the artist will be told all that is 

 known, outside manufacturing circles, of the constitution 

 of his pigments." How is this promise redeemed? We 

 turn to the description of white lead (pp. 97-101) ;— not a 

 word can we find as to the presence in it of intentional 

 adulterants or of such a frequent and injurious impurity 

 as lead subacetate. We search in the same way and with 

 the same result for some of the most rudimentary scraps 

 of information as to the chemical characters and tests for 

 the purity of vermilion, cadmium yellow, and artificial 

 ultramarine. Then too we find statements as to indi- 

 vidual pigments which are positively incorrect. It is not 

 strictly true that the Naples yellow now sold is an imita- 

 tion of the original pigment. One London house sells 

 the original pigment — an antimoniate of lead, another 

 supplies an equally good paint \\\ which some oxide of 

 zinc is associated with the antimoniate ; neither prepara- 

 tion is an " imitation," made, say, with cadmium yellow 

 and zinc white, and falsely called " Naples yellow." The 

 question of permanence is not adequately discussed in 

 this volume. We want numerical values representing the 

 degrees of change suffered by those pigments with which 

 the artist cannot dispense but which are known to alter 

 under exposure. For example, it is misleading to call 

 brown madder "very permanent" (p. 155): let anyone 

 try the effect of an exposure to a single summer's sunshine 

 of a wash of this paint on a sheet of pure white paper. 

 The same criticism applies to the statement (on p. 115) 

 that the midder lakes are " not liable to change by the 

 action of light." Certainly they cannot be termed fugitive 

 in the same sense as the cochineal lakes, but they are by 

 no means permanent. The editor of " Field's Chromato- 

 graphy " should have given more attention to gradations 

 in the amount and nature of the colour-changes suffered 

 by comparable pigments. In the tables of pigments in 

 the appendix (pp. 171 -185) no distinction is made between 

 pigments used as oil-colours and those employed in water- 

 colour drawings, although it is notorious that the medium 

 has a marked effect upon the degree of stability shown by 

 many pigments. .And we altogether object to the accuracy 

 of Table IV. (p. 176). Several of the pigments named in 

 that list are entirely unaffected " by admixture with ochres 

 and other ferruginous substances " instead of being " de- 

 composed " by them as there stated. 



The second work on our list has very slight claims on 

 our attention. Mr. Standage's " Manual of Pigments " is 

 stated on its title-page to show the composition of pig- 

 ments, their degrees of permanency, their adulterations, 

 and their mutual action ; it also oft'ers " the most reliable 

 tests of purity." But when we examine into the chemical 

 details given under the heads of the individual pigments 

 we find that this compilation teems with the most ludicrous 

 blunders. We proceed to cite a few of these, which need 



