August 8, 1907] 



NA TURE 



34; 



vevors, whose accounts, we are here told, although 

 " the best and most important of all the stirring 

 records of that remarkable country, have never yet 

 seen the light "; whereas, as is well known, all those 

 reports which were possessed of sufficient interest, 

 including the best of them, namely, that by A-K, 

 were published many years ago. 



The geographical theme is frequently lost sight of 

 altogether under the heaps of irrelevant topics that 

 are dragged in. Indeed, fully one-fifth of the whole 

 book is made up of generous extracts from the pages 

 of Hue, the Lazarist missionary (not " Jesuit "), not- 

 withstanding that our author admits " we do not gain 

 much in the way of geographical information from it " ! 

 Relying on such antiquated sources of information, 

 without being careful to check the stories by com- 

 parison with the more precise facts of later scientific 

 research. Sir Thomas repeats many of the erroneous 

 statements of the native surveyors as well as the 

 mistaken notions of the older European writers. 

 Thus, to take some instances at random, one 

 would imagine that the author had never heard of 

 the trustworthy work achieved by the British Survey 

 officers of the Lhasa Mission, so generally is it neg- 

 lected in preference to the less accurate data of the 

 pioneer native surveyors. In this way we have here 

 repeated the gross mistakes of U. G. and Sarat Das in 

 respect to the route from Gyantse onwards to Lhasa. 

 Amongst others, the Yamdok Lake is stated (p. 1 14) 

 to be 13,900 feet above the sea-level, and at p. 252 to 

 be 13,800 feet instead of the 14,350 feet as given 

 bv Major Ryder, while the adjoining Dumo Lake 

 is made to be 500 feet higher than the Yamdok. 

 whereas it is only some three feet higher. Even the 

 eleration of Lhasa is given at 11,600 feet instead of 

 11,830 feet. So, too, with the map of Lhasa; we are 

 told that A-K's old sketch-map is still " the best map 

 we possess of it " — this is very hard on Major Ryder, 

 who spent several days in the streets of Lhasa survey- 

 ing and measuring, and plotting out the city in a 

 large detailed map which was published more than 

 two years ago. 



The province of Nari, which stands in the extreme 

 north-western corner of Tibet, is strangely enough 

 stated to be in the " southern zone " of that country. 

 Darchendo, the great mart for Chinese tea on the 

 eastern border of Tibet, is, he says, " more correctly 

 called ' Ta-chien-lu ' in the newer " maps — the fact, 

 however, is rather the other way, as the latter is merely 

 a Chinese corruption of the former, which is the ori- 

 ginal and current Tibetan name of this important 

 place. In alluding to the Chinese invasion of Nepal, 

 our author goes beyond his authority when he credits 

 Sir Clements Markham with the statement that the 

 Chinese general " Sand Fo " (properly Sund F6) 

 sacked Kathmandu (which he spells Khatmandu) ; for 

 Markham does not say that the victorious Chinese even 

 entered the Nepalese capital, from w-hich the battle 

 was fought a day's march distant. So, too, we are 

 informed that Moorcroft (who w-as really a veterinary 

 surgeon temporarily employed by the East India Com- 

 pany on mule-breeding questions) was " a civilian of 

 the Indian Civil Service." 



NO. 1 97 1, VOL. 76] 



Elementary facts even as to the position of Lama- 

 ism have not been grasped. We read (p. 51) that 

 " Lhasa is the holy of holies, the ark of the cove- 

 nant to over one-third of the human race." This 

 amusing statement perhaps Sir Thomas did not mean 

 to be taken seriously. For, as pointed out years ago, 

 the Lhasa hierarchy has never b*en acknowledged by 

 Buddhists outside Tibet, beyond Mongolia and a few 

 of the sparsely populated Himalayan districts. The 

 Buddhists of China, Japan and Corea, Siam, Burma 

 and Ceylon would be astonished were they told that 

 Lhasa, of which few of them have ever heard, was 

 their " holy of holies." That place is sacred only to 

 some five or six million votaries, and not the " 400 

 millions " as here asserted. There are no distinctive 

 page headings, and misspelling is frequent. 



It would be pleasant to be able to congratulate the 

 author on the illustrations, but nearly all of these we 

 have seen elsewhere before. They are not very closely 

 connected with the letterpress, nor are the landscapes 

 very characteristic, whilst some of them are not what 

 thev profess to be; for out of the ten, at least two 

 are from the Sikklm side of the Himalayas, and not 

 in Tibet at all. ' L. A. W. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 An Outline of the Natural History of our Shores. By 



J. Sinel. Pp. xvi + 347; illustrated. (London: Swan 



Sonnenschein and Co., Ltd., igo6.) Price ys. 6d. 

 This book has been written " to help to open some of 

 the volumes of this part of Nature's library " by one 

 who, having spent nearly forty years by the sea-shore, 

 has had excellent opportunities of gaining the neces- 

 sary knowledge at first hand. 



Chapters i.-xiii. are devoted to descriptions, more 

 or less short, of the animals which are to 

 be found between tidemarks and in the mari- 

 time zone of Jersey, their habits and where to 

 look for them ; some account is aUo given 

 of the chief characters of the various groups, together 

 with descriptions of the anatomy of a few species, and 

 something about the development of others. The 

 author then deals with the various reasons for colour 

 in marine animals, of which he gives instances, to- 

 gether with examples of " mimetic artifices " among 

 the crabs (others are given in the chapter on Crustacea). 

 In the following chapters we are given lists of appara- 

 tus, &c., necessary for shore collecting and tow-netting, 

 with the method of use. A number of useful hints are 

 also given on anaesthetising, preserving, and mount- 

 ing specimens for the museum and other purposes, 

 and also for imbedding', cutting, and staining sec- 

 tions for the microscope. In the last chapter, dealing 

 with the marine aquarium, the beginner is initiated 

 into the, to most inland people at least, difficult art 

 of keeping and feeding the various marine animals 

 which flourish in captivity, and also of hatching and 

 rearing marine larvae. 



Although on the whole good, the book is marred by 

 several inaccurate statements ; among others we may 

 mention the following: — Echinoderms have a heart; 

 Loligo media is the young of L. forbesii; Galeoinma 

 is the only bivalve which crawls, whilst the author's 

 explanation of the way in which starfish open oysters 

 is certainly not the correct one. Moreover, we 

 cannot agree that the author has followed the nomen- 

 clature most generally in use, especially in Pisces and 

 Echinoderms. 



In the outfit of the shore collector, the absence of a 

 crowbar is rather surprising, especially on a rocky 



