March 20, 1902] 



NATURE 



461 



book to attempting to prove his theories by appeals to 

 facts philological and geographical ; but all that can be 

 said for his arguments is that if every assumption is cor- 

 rect, the deductions which he makes may be true, but if 

 almost any one of them breaks down, his whole fabric 

 must collapse. For example, Prof. Keane says unhesi- 

 tatingly, 



" the original Punt was South Arabia (Arabia Felix, 

 Yemen), whence the name was extended to Somaliland 

 during the eighteenth dynasty, say, about 1700 B.C." 



But this is impossible, for in the sixth dynasty Punt was 

 in .Africa, and was probably reached by way of the Nile ; 

 and as the inscription of Her-khuf, formerly at Aswan 

 and now at Cairo, contains the oldest mention of Punt 

 in such a way that its position can be traced, we see at 

 once that, so far as this remote period is concerned. Prof 

 Keane has no satisfactory authority for his statement, 

 " the original Punt was South Arabia." The Punt of the 

 eighteenth dynasty was reached in exactly the same way 

 as it was reached in the reign of Seankhka Ra (eleventh 

 dynasty), and all the Egyptological evidence available 

 goes to show that the region visited by the Egyptians at 

 both periods was in Africa. 



Prof. Keane thinks little of the evidence which Dr. 

 Peters has deduced from t\\& '■'■ ushabte figure impressed 

 in a mould " which he found in the middle of Africa 

 during his last expedition, yet he accepts the description 

 given of it to the effect that it has " in each hand a scourge 

 instead of a hoe." If the figure is an iishiihti figure, and 

 was really made in ancient days in a region far to the 

 south of Egypt "for a courtier of Thothmes III.," the 

 objects in the hands must have been intended to represent 

 the flail and the hoe of Osiris, otherwise the whole figure 

 is meaningless. In any case, how can it have a curious 

 significance (p. 35) because "it is armed with a scourge 

 in each hand, and [was] picked up in a mining district" .' 

 Let us hope that this wonderful figure may be placed 

 somewhere so that it maybe inspected by those interested 

 in the matter. 



Prof Keane relies too much upon the statements of the 

 late Mr. Bent in the deductions which he makes about 

 the ruins at Zimbabwe, and this is the case also in respect 

 of the views of the Hon. A. Wilmot, who wrote a volume 

 entitled " Monomotapa," and who adopted nearly all Mr. 

 Bent's views. Mr. Bent was an intrepid traveller and an 

 accomplished gentleman, but he knew no Semitic lan- 

 guage and his training as an archaeologist was rather 

 classical than anything else ; his opinion on all Phoe- 

 nician matters was, therefore, that of an intelligent but 

 untrained' amateur. 



Our want of space prevents the possibility of discussing 

 many of Prof. Keane's philological dicta, and we must 

 pass on to his 



" important conclusions,' which he trusts "may now be 

 considered fairly well established, and may therefore 

 legitimately take the place of the many theories and 

 speculations hitherto current regarding the 'Gold of 

 Ophir,' its source and forwarders " (p. 194). 



These are: — Ophir, on the south coast of Arabia, i.e. 

 Moscha, or Porters Nobilis, was the distributing market 

 of the gold of Havilab, or Rhodesia. The mines of 

 NO. 1690, VOL. 65] 



Rhodesia were first worked by South .Arabian Hini- 

 yarites, who were followed in the time of Solomon by 

 the Jews and Phcenicians, and these very much later by 

 the Moslem Arabs and Christian Portuguese. Tarshish 

 was the outlet for the precious metals, and was near the 

 modern Sofala. The Himyarites and the Phoenicians 

 reached Havilah through Madagascar, where they main- 

 tained commercial and social intercourse with the Mala- 

 gasy natives. With them were associated the Jews, by 

 whom the fleets of Hiram and Solomon were partly 

 manned. There is, of course, something to be said for 

 all these views, because each represents a possibility, but 

 the facts required to prove them are wanting. Never- 

 theless, Prof Keane's book is as valuable as it is interest- 

 ing, because it has put the question on a scientific base, 

 and we are glad to see that he has freed himself from the 

 ordinary traditional trammels in 'dealing with it. More- 

 over, we must acquit him of all mercenary motives in 

 trying to prove that the gold which Hiram and Solomon's 

 fleets obtained from Ophir came from Rhodesia, for so 

 far as we know, he has no pecuniary interest in the 

 mining operations which have been carried on in that 

 wonderful country during recent years. The "notes" 

 which he gives will be very useful to other workers in the 

 same field, and his index facilitates the profitable 

 perusal of the present book. 



EXPERIMENTAL WORK WITH GASES. 

 The Experimental Study of Gases. By Morris W. 

 Travers, D.Sc. With preface by Prof. W. Ramsay, 

 D.Sc, F.R.S. Pp. xii+323. (London: Macmillan 

 and Co., Ltd., 1901.) Price loj. net. 



IN 1857, Robert Bunsen published the first edition of 

 his classical work " Gasometrische Methoden," and 

 twenty years later a rewritten and enlarged edition of 

 the same, which still ranks as a standard text-book on 

 the subject. We think it is not too much to say that 

 since that date no more important work has been pub- 

 lished on the properties of gases in general than the one 

 now before us. The progress made in our knowledge of 

 the subject has probably been at least as rapid as in any 

 other department of chemistry, and the discovery within 

 the last half dozen years of five new elementary gases, in 

 the investigation of the properties of which Dr. Travers has 

 taken a prominent part, would alone afford justification 

 for this volume, did it contain nothing else of merit. 



The volume consists of 320 pages, with numerous 

 illustrations, most of which appear to be original and not 

 merely reproductions from current text-books. The first 

 portion of the book is taken up with a detailed descrip- 

 tion of the apparatus used, and the methods employed in 

 the preparation of gases in a state of purity and their 

 accurate measurement and analysis. Then follow 

 chapters on the gases of the helium group, the deter- 

 mination of density and the relations of pressure, tem- 

 perature and volume, the liquefaction of gases, and finally 

 their properties and the constants relating to them. 

 Careful perusal of the work leads us to the impression 

 that in this case (as is by no means always the rule) the 

 best chapters are those on the subjects with which the 



