414 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 63. 



friends tried to dissuade him from making the at- 

 tempt. He told them, ' ' When I get up there you 

 will see that the sun is stopping in its course. ' ' 

 He shot an arrow into the blue sky, saw it fly 

 and it stuck fast in the firmament. Another 

 arrow he sent into the notch of the first, another 

 one into the notch of the second and thus was 

 formed a long chain of arrows solid enough for 

 him to climb up. His bow served him to fill a 

 gap in the aerial road. Reaching the moon's 

 house, he was not molested by the dwarfs, but 

 well received by the chief of the moon's dwell- 

 ing, who washed and cleaned him thoroughly 

 and gave him moral advice what to do after 

 his return to the earth. A board was then re- 

 moved and Gamdigyetlne-eq could see the whole 

 earth extended below him as a cyclorama, he 

 then descended again on the arrow-ladder, which 

 fell to pieces after the descent was accomplished 

 and the upholding bow removed from the base. 

 Boas' book forms an interesting parallel to 

 his ' Chinook Texts ' previously reviewed in 

 Science, but differs from it bj^ the absence of 

 aboriginal Indian texts. 



Names and their Histories, alphabetically ar- 

 ranged as a handbook of historical geography 

 and topographical nomenclature. By Isaac 

 Taylor, M. A., Canon of York. London, 

 Rovington, Percival & Co., 34 King St. 

 1896. pp. 392. 12mo. 



To collect the geographic terms which serve 

 to compose a country's local names, and then 

 follow these terms through their compounds as 

 we find them used in the toponymy of a given 

 country, is a method not often followed as yet. 

 Isaac Taylor, M. A. , in his ' Names and their 

 Histories,' has given full swing to this synthetic 

 method in the appendices, and, we must say, 

 with laudable industry and good success. He 

 presents his interesting information not in the 

 form of dry sentences and axiomatic para- 

 graphs, but in the didactic shape of lectures, 

 which do not show any purpose of cramming 

 the listener's brain with erudition and quota- 

 tions derived from documents one thousand 

 years old. Taylor's easy, unobtrusive prose 

 conveys to the public only what is necessary to 

 know, by giving the earlier historic forms of 

 the local names and from them deducting their 



signification. The treatise on nomenclature is 

 subdivided in seven chapters, pages 303 to 390, 

 and contains the following items : Indian no- 

 menclature (of East India), Turkish nomencla- 

 ture, Magyar names, Slavonic nomenclature, 

 French village names, German nomenclature, 

 English village names. 



When the student of geography has passed 

 through these propaedeutics and become ac- 

 quainted with the elements of topography in 

 every group of dialects, he finds it many times 

 easier than before to retain so many foreign ap- 

 pellations, often unwieldy and jaw-breaking, 

 because their meaning is now familiar to Mm. 

 Of the Turkish names the majority are of a 

 vocalic utterance and well sounding, a great 

 help to memory. Thus Buyuk-dere is the 

 ' great valley ; ' Tash-bunar, the ' stone-well ; 

 Bunar-bashi, the ' head of the well ' (or 

 'spring') ; Kara Dagh, the 'black mountain;' 

 Mustagh, the ' ice mountain ; ' Daghestan, the 

 ' mountainous land ;' Kara-kum, ' black sand ;' 

 Yildiz, the ' northern ' (palace) ; Yeni-bazar, the 

 'new market.' The names of the seven terri- 

 tories have been studied for many years back 

 by linguists, and Taylor having made use of the 

 writings of his predecessors, can be relied on. 



The first part of the volume gives in 302 

 pages a large number of geographic names from 

 all parts of the globe in alphabetic sequence, 

 each with its historic and linguistic illustrations. 

 Here also Taylor strives to be on a level with the 

 popular understanding and avoids long argu- 

 ments, wherever these would lead him into dry 

 erudition and scholarly distinctions. Many 

 names are referred to historically, but their de- 

 rivation is not given because it could not be 

 given with safety ; of others the derivation is 

 given as 'probable' only, as of Nazareth, 

 which is supposed to mean a 'watch-tower,' 

 and of Cuba, said to mean ' middle province. ' 

 Of a large number the signification is certain, as 

 Damascus 'the place of industry,' Dundas, 

 ' southern fort, ' from Gaelic dun-deas ; Zim- 

 babwe the ' great kraal, ' Sligo called after 

 'shells found there in heaps,' Lampedusa, 'oys- 

 ter bank,' Liverpool, a pool where a waterfowl, 

 called ' liver, lever ' was found. Seville is 

 Phoenician and means 'plain, lowland,' Mar- 

 sala the 'port or harbor of All." Among those 



