July 22, 1909J 



NA TURE 



95 



ment of the Hellenic culture in Ionia. The Hittites 

 were predominant in Asia Minor from 2000 B.C. to 

 Sod B.C., and, besides being possessed of a highly 

 developed culture of their own, acted as intermediaries 

 for the transmission of Mesopotamian culture to the 

 Greeks. Of both these influences there is distinct 

 evidence in the few excavations that have been carried 

 out in Asiatic Greece. 



There appears to be a rich field awaiting the 

 archaeological excavator both in Ionia and in other 

 parts of Asia Minor. In Lydia, which was apparently 

 a Hittite satrapy, very little excavation has been done, 

 and in the Hittite country on the upper Euphrates 

 hundreds of buried cities are known to exist, in some 

 of which, it 'is almost certain, as Mr. Hogarth points 

 out, bilingual inscriptions connecting the Hittite script 

 with the Assj'rian will be found. We may, then, expect 

 discoveries equalling, if not excelling, in importance 

 those that have recently been made in Mesopotamia, 

 in Egypt, and in Crete. 



.Another iconoclastic view of Mr. Hogarth's is that 

 the Phoenicians played an insignificant part in the 

 development of Greek civilisation. He reduces " the 

 part played by the Phoenicians among the Greek 

 Isles and coasts to that of mere huckstering traders 

 who followed seaways long ago opened by others." 



Mr. Hogarth considers that the Hittites were not 

 a maritime people, but were confined strictly to their 

 continent by the ^Egean command of the sea. In 

 view of the migration from Lydia to Umbria related 

 bv Herodotus, and of the existing population of broad- 

 headed races in the Balkans, which, judging from 

 its present distribution, must apparently have landed 

 on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, Mr. Hogarth's 

 views on the non-maritime character of the Hittites 

 will, we venture to think, be considerably modified by 

 future discoveries. The one weak point in Mr. 

 Hogarth's admirable little book is his disregard of 

 the evidence of physical anthropology. No explana- 

 tion of the ethnological evolution of the East will be 

 satisfactory which fails to account for the transition 

 of the primitive dolichocephalic peoples of the Balkan 

 peninsula into the strongly brachycephalic population 

 of the present day, and in this respect Mr. Hogarth's 

 otherwise admirable work completely fails. J. G. 



SOhlE NEW CHEMICAL BOOKS. 

 (i) Naturgeschichte einer Kerze von Michael Faraday. 

 Herausgegeben von Dr. R. Meyer. Pp. viii-l-172. 

 (Leipzig : Quelle und Meyer, 1909.) Price 2.50 

 marks. 



(2) Junior Chemistry. By R. H. Adie. Pp. viii + 

 266. (Cambridge : Lfniversity Tutorial Press, 1909.) 

 Price 2S. id. 



(3) Chemistry. By Prof. W. A. Tilden, F.R.S. 

 Dent's Scientific Primers. Pp. ix-l- 108. (London : 

 J. M. Dent and Co., n.d.) Price is. net. 



(i) "p.ARAD.WS six lectures on the chemical history 

 J- of a candle were, it may be remembered, 

 delivered to a juvenile audience at the Royal Institu- 

 tion during the Christmas holidays of 1S60-1, nearly 

 half a century ago. 



In reading them we are impressed not merely by the 

 NO. 2073, VOL. Si] 



delightful simplicity and freshness of their style, and 

 by the variety and ingenuity of the experimental 

 illustrations, but more especially with the complete- 

 ness of the story he had to tell. There is little that 

 has been modified or extended in this branch of know- 

 ledge during these fifty years ; there is scarcely a 

 single sentence which might not be uttered without 

 comment or correction to a similar audience to-day. 



It is not surprising, therefore, that a fresh edition 

 of Dr. Meyer's excellent German translation should 

 be in demand among young people in Germany, 

 and it speaks well for their appreciation of Faraday 

 and his charming " chemical history" that the trans- 

 lation has reached its fifth edition. 



The book is attractively bound, and contains a very 

 pleasing portrait of the author, together with a short 

 biography. 



(2) Mr. Adie justifies the production of another 

 elementary chemistry on the ground that the average 

 first-year student shows a lack of intelligent under- 

 standing of chemical aims and methods, for which, 

 we infer, the other books are mainly responsible. We 

 are inclined to think that this want of intelligent 

 understanding is due neither to the character of a 

 particular book, nor altogether to the teacher, but to 

 the kind of chemistry done in schools and fostered by 

 the scholarship system of the older universities. 



If the systematic study of chemistry at the uni- 

 versity or college w-ere founded on a good general 

 knowledge of mechanics and physics, and an ele- 

 m.entary notion of those chemical processes applicable 

 to everyday phenomena, the path of the college pro- 

 fessor or lecturer would be made much smoother. 

 But schools are not content with this modest 

 piogramme, and insist upon a standard of knowledge 

 beyond the grasp of the average schoolboy. The 

 result is that the college teacher has to build upon a 

 muddy foundation of confused ideas, which are so 

 familiar to examiners and so difficult to eradicate 

 later. What commends Mr. Adie's new book is not 

 so much the disastrous effects of its predecessors as 

 the long teaching experience of the author. The 

 results of fifteen years' experience of a thoughtful 

 teacher are always valuable, and, as one might have 

 anticipated, the book offers a thoroughly sound course 

 of practical instruction. 



The arrangement of the exercises is clear and 

 logical, the examples are thoroughly typical, well 

 selected, well illustrated, and carefully described. 

 Many of the experiments, without being exactly new, 

 are modified and arranged in a convenient form, and 

 the quantitative examples, which are numerous and 

 varied, furnish a sound basis for that most difficult 

 part of chemistry, the understanding of quantitative 

 laws and the theories drawn from them. In reference 

 to the quantitative part, it would be interesting to 

 know what sort of errors the author obtained in 

 determining such things as the gravimetric composi- 

 tion of water, the weight of steam, and the analysis 

 of the oxides of nitrogen, of which no actual examples 

 are given. If the two oxides of nitrogen give any- 

 thing like correct results by the method described, that 

 much-quoted example of multiple proportion would 

 lose something of its elusive character. 



