34 
NATURE 
[May 8, 1902 
to which 7500/7. was added for the purchase of instru- 
ments, apparatus, &c. The value of the building site was 
probably 30,000/. to 40,000/. 
The Second Chemical Institute and the Technological 
Institute were both built after 1870, and have repeatedly 
received large sums for apparatus and instruments. 
A new building is at present in course of erection for 
the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, estimated to 
cost 26,250/. without the value of the site, which may 
amount to 10,000/._ The annual vote for instruments, &c., 
is to be raised from 225/. to 750/. 
These figures, as Consul Rose states, are eloquent 
enough, and show clearly what facilities are provided in 
these great instituticns for tuition in all branches of 
chemistry. “Finally they show—and this is, perhaps, 
the most significant indication of all—that the Prussian 
State, in spite of the expenditure already incurred, and 
the leading position attained by the chemical industries, 
is far from regarding the present admirable means of 
‘chemical instruction as adequate for future contingen- 
cies, but is at all times, after representations from the 
requisite industrial and educational quarters, prepared 
for further lavish outlay should future developments 
reveal this necessity.” T. E. THORPE. 
RHODESIA AND OPHIR} 
is this handsome and copiously illustrated volume are 
embodied the results of six years’ (1895-1900) 
systematic exploration amongst the numerous prehistoric 
remains of all kinds which are widely scattered over the 
whole region between the Zambesi and the Limpopo, and 
even range at some points into the conterminous dis- 
tricts of North Transvaal and Bechuanaland. During 
the operations, which were conducted under grants from 
the Chartered Company licensing these researches, the 
authors, with their indefatigable colleague, Mr. George 
Johnson, personally inspected nearly two hundred ruins, 
a list of which is here given and a great many of which 
are described in more or less detail. They further tell us 
that, so far from being completed, the work of exploration 
has scarcely been more than well begun, that their pre- 
‘cursors and contemporaries—Bent, Mauch, 
Maund, Willoughby, Swan, Schlichter, White—have 
merely scratched the surface, and that of more than five | 
hundred temples, citadels, enclosures, chains of forts, | 
gold workings and terraced slopes reported from various 
districts and covering a total area of at least 115,000 
square miles, not a tenth part has yet been thoroughly 
examined. This will be read with surprise by those 
archeologists who supposed that after Bent and Swan’s 
classical descriptions of the “Great Zimbabwe” and a 
few neighbouring monuments, little more remained to be 
discovered. But the statement is supported by abundant 
‘first-hand evidence, and it is shown that Zimbabwe itself 
“is still practically unexplored,” while elsewhere the 
original floors of the ear/zer structures still rest for the 
‘most part buried under ten or even fifteen feet of the 
accumulated débris of ages. 
That there are earlier and later structures, bespeaking 
either a long continuous or an intermittent occupation of 
the land by foreign intruders, is placed beyond all doubt, 
and a comparative study of the various groups so far ex- 
plored has enabled the authors tentatively to classify 
them in four categories, clearly indicating time sequences 
ranging from at least 1000 B.C., possibly even 2000 B.c., 
down to the advent of the Mohammedan Arabs and | 
Portuguese. The buildings of the first period, of which 
the Great Zimbabwe is typical, are marked by great 
solidity and superior workmanship, with massive walls 
1“The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia.” By R. N. Hall and W. G. Neal 
‘with above seventy illustrations, maps and plans. Pp. xxvii + 396. (London 
Methuen anil Co., 1902.) Price 21s. net. 
NO. 1697, VOL. 66] 
Baines, | 
; Mashonaland) lying nearest to the seaboard. 
| mains of. the first period are also met sporadically 
of dry masonry resting on the bed-rock, often 15 to 
17 feet thick at base, batter-backed both inside and 
outside, with no false courses, but bonded throughout 
their entire width and diversely ornamented with den- 
telle, check, chevron and especially herring-bone patterns 
(Fig. 1). These are assigned with Bent, Schlichter and 
myself to the South Arabian Himyarites, and are com- 
pared—in their characteristic elliptical curves, the 
absence of mortar and other details—with the ruined. 
temples and palaces of Marib (Maraiaba Bahramalakum), 
capital of the ancient Sabaean empire. 
To the Phoenician successors of the Sabzans are 
assigned the less substantial and otherwise somewhat 
inferior structures of the second period, which are either 
superimposed upon, or else form extensions of, the earlier 
monuments, and also occur by themselves generally in 
CHECK PATTERN 
DENTELLE PATTERN 
CHEVRON PATTERN 
DECORATIVE PATTERNS 
Fic. 1. 
districts farther removed from the east coast. This is, 
of course, what we should expect to find on the assump- 
tion that the Himyarites were the first arrivals, and settled 
in the rich auriferous tracts (Manica, Sabi basin, 
Yet re- 
farther west in various parts of Matabililand, which may 
be explained either by assuming a very long pre- 
Phoenician Sabzean occupation or a joint Sabzeo-Phazni- 
cian occupation probably in Solomonic times, when we 
know that peaceful relations prevailed between the 
Israelites, Hiram, King of Tyre, and Balkis, Queen of 
Sheba. It was then that the auriferous stream, which 
had already reached Palestine during the reign of David, 
rose to high-water level, and it is here suggested that 
