Nov. 18, 1869] 
NATURE 
81 
The Half-crown Atlas of Physical Geography. By 
Keith Johnston, jun. 31 maps, printed in colours. 
Small 8vo. (Edinburgh, Johnston.) 
TuIs atlas astonishes and delights us. For two shillings 
and sixpence we at last get beautifully finished maps, 
showing the land and water hemispheres, and the lands 
which are blessed with an antipodes; a perspectic view of 
the globe ; physical maps of the continents, Australasia, 
British Isles, and the Holy Land, a geological map of the 
British Isles, maps of ocean and river systems, ocean 
basins, winds and storms, annual isothermal lines, and 
range of temperature, distribution of earthquakes and vol- 
canoes; the geographical distribution of useful plants and 
species, the chief animals, and varieties of man himself. 
There are, moreover, notes as to the preparation of the 
atlas, and an analytical index. We warmly congratulate 
Messrs. Johnstons on their last achievement, and advise 
everybody to buy the atlas. 
Cassell’s Technical Manuals.—r. Linear Drawing. 2. 
Projection. 3. Building Construction. By Ellis A. 
Davidson. Price 2s.each. (London: Cassell, Petter, 
& Galpin.) 
THESE little books are intended to promote the tech- 
nical education of artisans, and seem to be well-adapted 
to facilitate the work of teachers and learners. The 
manual of Linear Drawing shows the application of prac- 
tical geometry to trade and manufactures, and has been 
appropriately chosen as the first volume of a technical 
series for craftsmen. The methods of constructing geome- 
trical figures are given without the mathematical proofs 
which usually accompany such problems. The applica- 
tion of some of the figures to decorative and mechanical 
work is illustrated in diagrams of the trefoil, quatrefoil, 
toothed wheel, ellipse, &c. Accuracy is persistently incul- 
cated, and all the figures are admirably executed. The 
manual of Projection leads the student many steps further, 
and treats of the drawing of plans, elevations, and sec- 
tions of solids. The chapter on isometrical projection 
explains that system of drawing in a clear and concise 
manner. In some of the more elaborate figures fewer 
lines of construction might have been used with advan- 
tage. The observations on drawing instruments, and their 
use, are thoroughly practical. The third treatise elucidates 
the principles of Building Construction, and gives some 
useful hints on architectural drawing. It is profusely 
illustrated with diagrams ; these are generally good, but 
the minor details of a few need correction. C. W. W. 
Picture Natural History. (London: Cassell, Petter, and 
4 Galpin.) 
WE have submitted this volume to an abler critic than 
ourselves—to a little boy. He is delighted with the 
pictures, and interested in the text. We should like to 
give it to every little boy and girl we know. 
Tommy Try, and what he did in Science. ByC. O. G. 
Napier (of Merchiston), F.G.S. Pp. 302, with 46 
Illustrations, by J. D. Cooper, and others. (Chapman 
& Hall.) 
A Book for boys, in which science and anecdote chase 
each other through a pleasant narrative, until Tommy 
Try takes to consulting phrenologists, and then, fortunately 
for his young readers, brings his memoirs to a close. 
THE SUEZ CANAL 
2 all went well, and we hope it did, yesterday witnessed 
a grand gathering on the sandy shores of a dreary bay 
in the Midland Sea—that sea around which so much of 
history has been enacted, and in whose annals the 
gathering in question will not be the least noteworthy in- 
cident. The Suez Canal—that problem of many cen- 
turies—is to be opened in presence of emperors, kings, 
princes, and potentates; of eminent engineers, famous 
warriors, and distinguished savas invited from the East 
and from the West ; and while the ceremonial lasts the 
very dreariest of the dreary wastes that here and there 
border the blue waters of the Mediterranean will be 
animated by a brilliant throng and the sound of music; 
and speeches will be made and healths will be drunk, and 
all present will join in wishing success to the memorable 
enterprise, which, for a time, is to furnish to Arab story- 
tellers and Frankish newsmongers a topic to talk about. 
Dreary as the region is, it has a history. There 
marched with invading armies the kings whose names 
are recorded in Scripture; there Artaxerxes was stayed in 
his victorious advance by the siege of Pelusium ; there 
are yet to be seen relics of cities and towns named in the 
“Itinerary ” of Antoninus; there Titus marched to the siege 
of Jerusalem ; there Baldwin and his Crusaders took the 
city of Pharamia: the actors in these and other exploits 
never dreaming that the sands of the desert, drifted by the 
winds and by the stream of the Nile, would so bury and 
alter the surface of the land, that after generations should 
be puzzled to identify its historical localities. 
The question of a canal dates from a very early period. 
In high floods the waters of the Nile spread to within two 
or three miles of the Red Sea, which would suggest the 
idea of a permanent communication between the river 
and the great Arabian Gulf. This communication was 
actually established, as is said, under Ptolemy Philadel- 
phus ; but of course it fell into neglect, and was buried 
under the drifting sands, until one of the caliphs had it 
cleared out, after which there was a navigable canal be- 
tween the Nile and the Red Sea for more than a hundred 
years. Then it was again lost, and so completely that its 
ever having existed became matter of doubt and dispute. 
But the main project was a ship canal across the 
isthmus. There is some tradition that Alexander con- 
sulted with his engineer officers as to its feasibility, and 
that they reported against it on account of the difficulty in 
preventing the mouth of the canal from silting up. In a 
later age Sultan Selim, who had been baffled in his 
scheme for a canal to connect the Don and Volga, re- 
solved on cutting one from Pelusium to Suez; and he took 
an important step towards accomplishing his purpose, for 
he conquered the country all across, and made his name a 
terror to the Arabs. But he did not live to cut the canal. 
The first Napoleon revived the project, and ordered a 
survey, during which the long-buried remains of the 
canal above-mentioned were discovered, and the question 
as to its having existed was settled. From that time the 
question of a ship-canal became a standing topic, enlist- 
ing divers opinions, among which were some to the effect 
that the project was simply impossible, because, as the 
level of the Red Sea was so much higher than that of the 
Mediterranean, the swift current in one direction would 
prevent navigation. 
During this time of debate, Captain Spratt of the 
Royal Navy was sent, with the ship J/eda, to make a 
survey along the shores of Egypt and of the Isthmus, of 
which an account was published by the Admiralty in 
1859, entitled, “An Investigation of the Effect of the 
prevailing Wave Infltience on the Nile’s Deposits ;” and 
this was followed by “ A Dissertation on the True Position 
of Pelusium and Farama.” Beginning at the western ex- 
tremity of the Egyptian coast, Captain Spratt found that 
the Nile there exerted no influence, but that, owing to the 
prevalent north-westerly and westerly winds, the deposits 
brought down by the Nile were drifted to the eastward in 
prodigious quantity, even to the shores of Syria. This 
was no hasty conclusion : by a careful series of soundings 
and dredgings, Captain Spratt determined the identity of 
the sand along the sea bottom, within a given distance of 
the shore, with that of the deserts through which the Nile 
flows. Farther out to sea the sand was coralline, and of 
an entirely different character, while the Nile drift is 
made up of quartzose sand, with fine mud and particles 
of mica, The verifications in this particular were too 
