806 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol.. II., No. 46. 



the wax. The metal was introduced at the opening 

 left for the escape of the wax. 



Soldering was unknown to the men of the bronze 

 age: mending was done by riveting. The art of sof- 

 tening bronze was known to the ancients. Proclus 

 says (^Works and Days, line 1842) that " in ancient 

 times men used bronze in cultivating the ground just 

 as they use iron now; but that copper being soft in 

 its nature, they hardened it by immersion." Eusta- 

 thius also says (Iliad, book I., line 236) that they 

 tempered the bronze when using it in place of iron. 

 The chemist Darcet, at the end of the last century, 

 showed: 1. That pure copper, heated to redness and 

 plunged into cold water, is neither hardened nor 

 softened; 2. Bronzes having only tin alloy, and that 

 less than thirty per cent, heated and cooled in air, 

 become weak and brittle; 3. The same bronzes, 

 heated and cooled in water, are softened, and become 

 very tractable. 



It is nearly certain that the men of the bronze age 

 tempered their implements in taking them from the 

 mould. Those destined to stand a blow were left in 

 this state. Arras and tools needing more temper 

 were heated over, and cooled in the air. 



Another prehistoric art, rediscovered by the en- 

 gineers of Alexandria, and recently again brought to 

 light from the orient, is rendering bronze flexible. 

 This property of flexibility is certainly possessed by 

 some very ancient specimens. The engineer Philo, 

 who lived in the century before our. era, describes, in 

 his ' Treatise on artillery,' the fabrication of springs 

 of bronze needed in some of his machinery. 



The author from whom the foregoing notes are 

 taken, A. de Rochas, will soon publish, through 

 Masson at Paris, a volume on the origin of industry, 

 and the first application of the sciences. — {Rev. 

 scient., Sept. 22.) J.vr.p. [537 



Seamy side of th-e Vedas. — Max Miiller tells us 

 in his recent work, ' India, what it can teach us,' 

 that in the Vedas we have a nearer approach to a 

 beginning, and an intelligible beginning, than in the 

 wild invocations of Hottentots and Bushmen. Mr. 

 Andrew Lang holds the mirror up to this assertion 

 by showing that a higlily civilized people are farther 

 from the beginning In their religion than races which 

 have not evolved nor accepted society. Again : there 

 is nothing particularly wild in some of the invoca- 

 tions of the Bushmen [Cape monthly, July, 1874), 

 nor of the Papuans {Journ. anthrop. inst., Feb., 18S1). 

 Compare the prayer of Odysseus to the Phaeacian 

 king. And, finally, the faith of Vedic worshippers 

 was very near akin, in the wildness of its details and 

 its mythology, to the faith of Bushmen and Hotten- 

 tots. In the Rig Veda human sacrifice has left its 

 traces, the practice endui'ing in symbols and sulisti- 

 tutes which point back to something ' nearer the 

 laeginning.' The ninetieth hymn of the tenth book 

 of the Rig Veda tells how all things were made out 

 of the limbs of a giant, Purusha. A similar legend is 

 found among Scandinavians, Iroquois, Egyptians, 

 Greeks, and Tinneh. It would be easy to show that 

 Vishnu, in the shape of a boar bringing up the world 

 from the waters, is equivalent to the North American 



coyotes and muskrats performing the same feat. The 

 origin of species from Purusha is matched only by 

 the metamorphoses and amatory pursuits of Zeus, 

 Kronos, Demeter, and Nemesis. Indeed, we seem to 

 have a nearer approach to a beginning in the Vedic 

 hymns, In those very portions In which they resemble 

 the primitive philosophy of Bushmen and Navajos. 

 The gods in the Vedic religion are deified nature; 

 and we frequently see gods in animal form fighting 

 with animals, afraid of enemies, behaving like the 

 half anthropomorphic, half theriomorphic deities of 

 the Australians, Hottentots, and Bushmen. The 

 gods are begotten of heaven and earth, and are not 

 necessarily immortal. The birth of Indra is very 

 similar to that of Heitsl-Eibib, the supreme god of 

 the Hottentots; and some of his feats have parallels 

 in Scandinavian, Thlinkit, Murri, and Californian 

 myths. Speaking of the other Vedic gods, Mr. Lang 

 quotes the language of Racine respecting the deities 

 of the Greeks: "Burning was too good for most of 

 them. ... If any one wishes to see at a glance how 

 much savage thought persisted till the ■ age of the 

 Brahmanas, let him compare the myths of the con- 

 stellations (iSacr. books of the eaKt, xii. 282) with the 

 similar myths in Brough Smyth's 'Aborigines of 

 Victoria.' Except upon the hypothesis that the 

 Aryans came civilized into the world, they must 

 have descended from savage aucestoi-s. That they 

 retained savage practices, such as human sacrifices, 

 and much worse things, is universally admitted. 

 Wliy should they not have retained savage ideas in 

 religion and mythology, especially as of savage ideas 

 Aryan mythology and religion are full to the brim ? " 

 — J. w. p. [538 

 Anthropology at Berlin. — The organ of the 

 Berlin society of anthropology has just completed its 

 fifteenth year, and contains matter of interest not 

 only to the local but also to the general student. 

 Part iv. opens with a paper by Ernst Botticher on 

 the analogies of the Hissarlik finds. Dr. Scliliemann"s 

 ' owl-faced ' vases are characterized as canopus vases, 

 and thus connected in type with the various art pro- 

 ductions of Egypt, in which the bird-face predomi- 

 nates. The ornamentation of funereal urns with a 

 bird-face, — be It that of a falcon, owl, or sparrow, — 

 and the occurrence of the same custom from the Bal- 

 tic to the Nile banks, are worthy of remark. Until 

 historic evidence clears up the subject, the learned 

 must move their opinions back and forward in the 

 alternation of independent evolution and social con- 

 tact. Prof. Arzruni reviews the jadeite and ne- 

 phrite discussion, quoting and criticising the writings 

 of Meyer, Damour, Janettaz and Michel, Fischer, 

 Beck, and v. Muschketow. The author carefully 

 excludes from the discussion minerals which have 

 been confounded with those above named, and also 

 mentions the fact that they have different character- 

 istics in different localities. In Europe, up to this 

 time, neither jadeite nor nephrite has been found in 

 situ. Prof. Arzruni closes Ills paper with the cita- 

 tion of those localities in each continent which have 



furnished the minerals or their products. M. 



Kulischer speaks of the handling of children and 



