152 



NATURE 



[Dec. 1 8, 1879 



and Rome, from the oldest historic period down to about 

 the middle of the third century of the Christian era. 

 Referring to his sources of information the author ex- 

 presses his acknowledgments to the Biblical and Assyrian 

 records and the classical writers of Greece and Rome. 

 Alluding to Aristotle's work, " The History of Animals," he 

 quotes Lewes's well-known remarks thereon, which, while 

 he will not fully endorse, he yet on the whole agrees with. 



The author warns the reader not to expect an ex- 

 haustive treatise on the subject ; the avowed object, as 

 the title indicates, being but gleanings picked up almost 

 at random from a spacious field; indeed, a volume quite 

 as large might be written on only those domestic animals 

 known to the ancients. If not a complete history, these 

 " Gleanings " are, however, very pleasant reading, deeply 

 interesting to the intelligent student, and making him 

 wish for more. In some cases a little more information 

 would be useful, and we would venture to suggest to the 

 author that in another edition he might with advantage 

 add more details about the very early history of some of 

 the best known of the animals which he has selected for 

 notice. Thus the Egyptians were the only people amongst 

 the ancients who habitually domesticated the common 

 cat ; with them it was a great favourite, and we would 

 certainly have liked a little more of what the author 

 could have told us about the cat as it is found in an 

 Egyptian home ; had it a pet name there ? and is it not 

 strange that the children of Israel do not seem to have 

 come across it during their lengthened sojourn in that 

 strange land? In another edition the references should 

 be quoted at greater length ; thus the general reader could 

 scarcely be expected to know that the translation of Prof. 

 Gubernati's interesting work on "Zoological Mythology" 

 is referred to as "Guber. Zool. Myth." 



The Egyptian dog is acknowledged by the author not 

 to come up to the standard of modern European views of 

 canine beauty ; but he is not so severe on them as Mr. 

 Mahafty, in whose eyes the house-dogs appear to have 

 been worthless curs, and the hunting-dogs more like 

 those lanky creatures kept by some of the Irish peasantry 

 for an occasional Sunday coursing match (Mahaffy, 

 " Prolegomena of Ancient History "). The author 

 states that the Egyptian monuments anterior to the date 

 of Amosis (about B.C. 1500), of the eighteenth dynasty, 

 give no representation of horses, but considers it would 

 not be safe to conclude from negative evidence that the 

 horse was not introduced into Egypt anterior to that 

 date. Leaving- the date of the papyrus Sallier to be 

 settled by experts, but presuming it from Mr. Goodwin's 

 Essay ("Cambridge Essays," 1858) to relate to events 

 about the time of the Exodus, we find such allusions as 

 " The horses of my lord are well," and "His ploughshare, 

 which is of metal, corrodes, the horses die through the 

 labour of ploughing;" the latter is very remarkable for 

 being part of the complaint of an agricultural tenant ; 

 these would show that at this date— possibly the date of 

 the years of famine— horses, were then employed in field 

 work. 



The common pig formed part of the farmyard stock of 

 the Egyptians, and the author thinks that they were kept 

 as probably useful in treading in the corn after it was 

 sown, and he quotes Herodotus and yElian as describing 

 the process ; neither author says anything about the pigs 



being muzzled when performing this useful part, but they 

 are shown as such on a Theban sculpture referred to. 



The section about the pigeons might be greatly ex- 

 panded ; there is next to nothing told us about the pigeon 

 as known to the Egyptians and Hebrews, and though 

 there is a woodcut from an Assyrian sculpture showing 

 hare and birds, yet there is not a word in the text as to 

 the hare being known to the Hebrews and Assyrians. 



The second part of the volume on wild animals is 

 nearly equally interesting as the first. In it we read of 

 the lion, hyena, stag, wild bulls, boar, vulture, pelican, 

 ostrich, and many other birds, as well as of several species 

 of fish, known in the olden times. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Bulletin des Sciences Mathhnatiques et Astronomiques. 



Deuxieme serie, tome iii., avril 1879. (Paris.) 

 This number opens with abstracts of works by H. 

 Lemonnier (" Memoire sur l'Elimination," Paris, 1879); 

 E. Schering (" Analytische Thdorie der Determinanten," 

 Gottingen, 1S77) ; and an interesting note by S. Kantor 

 (" Quelques Thdoremes nouveaux sur l'Hypocyclo'ide a 

 trois Rebroussements "). Our present object is, however, 

 to take notice of two long articles by M. G. Darboux, (a) 

 "Sur un nouvel Appareil a Ligne droite de M. Hart" (7 pp.) 

 (/3) " Recherches sur un Systeme articule' " (42 pp.). 



(a) is founded on a five-bar linkwork, described by Mr. 

 Hart in the eighth volume of the Proceedings of the 

 London Mathematical Society (p. 288), which M. Darboux 

 looks upon as a construction of great interest. The writer 

 explains Mr. Hart's method and slightly generalises it, 

 getting the following results : (1) an ellipse and Pascal's 

 limaqon can also be described by the linkwork ; (2) a 

 movement of a straight line which always remains 

 horizontal whilst its several points describe vertical 

 straight lines. By means of a duplication of the appa- 

 ratus, " on pourra poser une table sur ces droites, et Ton 

 aura ainsi la disposition la plus simple connue, per- 

 mettant de r^aliser un mouvement parallele dont les 

 applications sont eVidemment tres-variees." 



Q3) is a di-cussion of Mr. Kempe's "recherches tres- 

 interessantes" "On Conjugate Fourpiece Linkages" in 

 the ninth volume of the Proceedings of the same Society 

 (pp. 133-147). M. Darboux remarks that Mr. Kempe has 

 considered one interesting case only, that, viz., "ou les 

 equations sont des identites et oil par consequent la 

 deformation de la figure est possible." He praises the 

 ingenuity of the method employed, and says that Mr. 

 Kempe has arrived at a large number of solutions of a 

 problem which, a priori, would be thought to have none. 

 He then proceeds to attack the question in a more general 

 manner, connecting the problem with the use of Mr. 

 Hart's apparatus, referred to in his paper (a). " La 

 marche qui j'ai adoptee repose d'une part sur l'emploi des 

 grandeurs geomitriques dans le plan et sur leur expres- 

 sion bien connue au moyen d'une variable complexe, et 

 d'autre part sur les recherches que j'ai publiees recem- 

 ment ' et d'apres lesquelles la thdorie du quadrilatere 

 articule' est identique a celle d'une cubique plane, que 

 j'appellerai cubique associce au quadrilatere." 



Denoting the outer quadrilateral of Mr. Kempe's 

 figure by M N P Q, and the inner by M' ' N 1 P Q', M. 

 Darboux calls them respectively the quadrilaterals T, I, 

 and the associated cubics he calls the cubics T, U, and 

 taking A /', t", /'", it, u' , u" , u'" as the co-ordinates of a point 

 in space with reference to the two cubics, he finds the 

 conditions that a certain group (4) of equations between 

 these co-ordinates shall be satisfied by an infinite number of 

 values of the /'sandw's. He regards these equations, 

 when the movement of the figure is possible, as estabhsh- 

 « P, icg of the Bulletin for March, 1S79. 



