206 
NATURE 
[Fan. 12, 1871 

We avail ourselves of the opportunity of noticing this 
book, because, while it is intended to circulate chiefly 
amongst gardeners, both professional and amateur, it 
seeks to convey such information on the real value of the 
plants, which, we think, should in all cases be a point in 
a gardener’s education. j.R. J. 
A Cyclopedia of Quantitative Chemical Analysis. By 
Frank H. Storer, A.M., Professor of General and 
Analytical Chemistry in the Massachussetts Institute 
of Technology. Part I., pp. 112. (Boston and Cam- 
bridge: Lever, Francis, and Co. London: E, and 
¥. N. Spon, Charing Cross, 1870). 
TuIs book is a compilation of all the known methods of 
quantitative analysis. The processes and necessary ap- 
paratus are minutely detailed, the descriptions being repro- 
duced from the various handbooks of chemistry and from 
the original memoirs. The labour entailed by such a work 
must necessarily have been very great, and its value is 
much increased by the numerous references to the original 
descriptions of the processes. This part extends as far as 
the article on carbonate of silver, from which some notion 
of the extent of the whole work may be obtained. The 
principles on which the analytical methods depend are 
shortly stated in each article, and under these headings 
are described the methods employed, and the precautions 
to be observed, the whole beiig arranged in separate 
paragraphs for facility of reference. This work promises 
to be very useful as a book of reference, and will enable 
the analyst to select without much labour the process 
most suitable to the work in which he is engaged. We 
recommend this book to the attention of analytical 
chemists, being convinced that it will be found to contain 
much valuable information in a very convwgnient form. 
A Series of Chemical Problems for Use in Colleges and 
Schools, adapted for the Preparation of Students for 
the Government Science and Society of Arts Examina- 
tions. By T.E. Thorpe, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry 
in Anderson’s University, Glasgow. With a Preface 
by Prof. Roscoe. Pp. 67. (London: Macmillan and 
Co. ; Manchester : J. Galt and Co., 1870.) 
THIS little book contains a number of useful tables and 
descriptions of the modes of calculation made use of in 
chemical science, illustrated by examples. Each section 
is followed by a series of questions, for the most part 
original, but some of which are selected from the examina- 
tion papers of the Science and Ari department and from 
the Owens College calendar. The subjects treated are 
Weights and Measures, Thermometric Scales, Correc- 
tion of Volumes of Gases, Specific Gravity, Percentage 
Composition, Quantities of Reagents necessary to form 
certain Products, Combination and Decomposition of 
Gaseous Bodies, Determination of Atomic Weights, Cal- 
culation of Empirical Formula, and of the Results of 
Analysis, Specific Heat, Latent Heat, and Calorific 
Power. The collection of questions will doubtless be 
useful to students preparing for examination, and to 
teachers endeavouring to familiarise their pupils with the 
details of chemical investigation. 


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his Correspondents, No notice is taken of anonymous 
communications. | 
Professor Max Muller and the Insulation of St. 
Michael’s Mount, Cornwall 
THOUGH very much gratified at the fact that something from 
my pen has prompted Prof. Max Miiller to give us another 
“Chip from his German Workshop,” I was by no means pre- 
pared for the mode of treating materials which he has adopted 



in the Chip to which I refer—his paper on the “ Insulation of 
St. Michael’s Mount.” * 
As the author states, I read a paper to the British Association 
in 1865, at Birmingham (not Manchester as he supposes), and in 
April 1867, delivered a Friday evening lecture at the Royal 
Institution ; each having the same title as his paper just 
mentioned. 
With the exception of fifteen lines in the Report of the Associa- 
tion, the first was never printed either 7 exfenso or in abstract. 
I conclude from the Professor’s paper, however, that he saw a 
notice or report of it in some newspaper or journal ; but, if so, 
I can only say that it was neither written nor corrected by me, 
nor with my knowledge, and that I decline to be responsible 
for it. 
The lecture in 1867 was delivered from very brief notes, but 
an abstract of it was subsequently written by myself for the 
“« Proceedings of the Royal Institution,” and, printer’s errors ex- 
cepted, contained my opinions on the question. 
Tt is clear from Prof. Max Miiller’s paper that a copy of this 
abstract was in his possession when he wrote his article. Indeed, 
the ‘* short account” of the Mount which he ‘* quotes ” from me 
is from it, and not from the paper of 1865. Though substantially 
correct, this quotation contains three errors which may as well be 
set right in passing. On page 330 “‘very high water” and ‘‘very 
low water” (lines 9 and 10) should be ‘‘every high water” and 
“‘every low water,” and ‘‘the total isthmus” (line 13) should be i 
the ‘‘ tidal isthmus.” : 
In the paper of 1865 the following points were assumed :— 
(1) that the old Cornish name of the Mount was ‘‘ Cara clowse 
in Cowse;”’ (2) that it had been correctly translated as the 
‘*hoar rock in the wood ;” (3) that the name was appropriate 
when given ; and (4, on the authority of Dr. Boase and Dr, T. 
F. Barham) that Florence of Worcester expressly stated that 
**the Mount was formerly five or six miles from the sea, and en- 
closed with a very thick wood.”’ Though fully aware that each 
of these points might be open to question, I supposed them to 
have, at least, a fair amount of evidence in their favour, and 
hence concluded that the insulation of the Mount had taken place 
sincet he introduction of the old Cornish language into the district. 
Now, such insulation must have been the result of the encroachment 
of the sea merely, or of a more or less general subsidence; and 
my object was to show that it was the latter. In order to do this 
I attempted to dispose of the first hypothesis—insulation by en- 
croachment without subsidence, A careful personal investigation of 
the Mount and the mainland, and the evidence of an old intelligent 
native, led me to the conclusion that to take the average retro- : 
cession of the cliff at ten feet in a century would probably be an 
excessively high estimate, and that, even at;this rate of waste, . 
“the hypothesis of insulation by encroachment only, appeared to 
wall was inhabited by men who spoke a language which prevailed 
in the same district to within a very few centuries of our own 
time, and which, from its similarity to the Welsh, might be said 
to be spoken still by a large population within our own island.” 
Believing this conclusion respecting the antiquity of the Cornish 
language to be utterly untenable, I at once rejected it, and, with 
it, the hypothesis of insulation by encroachment merely, remark- 
ing of it that it “squandered time most lavishly.” 
I am, of course, delighted to find myself supported by Prof. 
Max Miiller in the rejection of this vast antiquity of the Cornish 
language, for he tells us (p. 364) that it ‘*would completely 
revolutionise our received views as to the early history of 
language.” It is strange, however, and probably only to be 
demand the belief that at least twenty thousand years ago Corn- 
J 
accounted for by his trusting to a newspaper report of my paper, 
that he supposes that, instead of rejecting it, I have ‘‘adduced 
evidence in support” of this great antiquity (p. 354). The point 
of my argument was that the hypothesis of ‘insulation by en- 
croachment without subsidence” could not be admitted, decause 
it led to an untenable philological conclusion, 
Turning next to the hypothesis of insulation through subsidence 
—the only alternative consistent with the assumptions made at the 
beginning—I proceeded to show that the numerous submerged 
forests which skirted the western coasts of England, and of which 
a good example in the Mount’s Bay had been described by Dr, 
Bouse in 1822,+ were to the geologist sufficient and satisfactory 
proof of a general subsidence of the country; and then pointed 
out that whilst, on the one hand, this change of level could not © 
haye occurred within the last 1,900 years, since, about 9 B.C., 
*«* Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. iii. pp. 335-357 (1870). 
t Trans, Roy. Geol, Sog, of Cornwall, vol. ii. p, 129 e¢ seq, 

