206 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 453 



inapplicable. How absurd, then, to claim that the ancients had 

 the same notion in regard to rains following battles as that which 

 prevails at the present day. We mii;ht well question, indeed, 

 whether there was any such idea prevailing among the ancients 

 as that to which Plutarch alludes, as a single and unsupported 

 statement by one writer alone is not very conclusive evidence: but 

 admitting that he may have spoken advisedly or. the subject, it is 

 plain that it was not a "common thought" with that of the 

 modei-ns, and all reasoning against the concussion theory based on 

 it must fall to the ground. 



The second point in Professor Hazen's article to which I wish 

 to refer is the wholly unwarranted assumption that all, or nearly 

 all, the battles of our late war which I have not shown in " War 

 and the Weather" to have been followed by rain were not so fol- 

 lowed. On a par with this is the violence he does to history in 

 assuming that the 3,200 battles which he says were fought during 

 that war were, on an average, as severe as the 158 mentioned in 

 my book. The greater part of the 2,043 which he says I do not 

 mention could have been nothing more than skirmishes. The 

 most remarkable thing about Professor Hazen's article is that 

 although he has read my book he pays no attention to any of the 

 explanations or arguments I make. I explain the difficulty, from 

 want of records, of getting reliable information in regard to the 

 weather following the land battles that were fought, and he coolly 

 proceeds to count all those not proved to have been followed by 

 rain as belonging to the other side. I give a reason why we should 

 not expect skirmishes to produce rain, and he counts them all in 

 as if one such, not followed by rain, furnished as good evidence 

 against the theory as a great battle followed by heavy rain fur- 

 nishes for it. By this cheap method of figuring he makes out that 

 only seven per cent of the battles were followed by rain. What 

 weight has such an argument against the fact that all the great 

 historic battles of the war, so far as reliable information can be 

 obtained, were followed by heavy rains? 



Professor Hazen argues that the influence of explosions could 

 not extend twenty-four hours, for the reason that the current sub- 

 jected to it "is borne along at the rate of 20, and, in the higher 

 strata, at 30, 40, 50, and more, miles per hour, so that the specific 

 influence from them will be carried at least 500 miles away in 

 twenty-four hours." Now the learned professor cannot be sure of 

 his ground here unless his knowledge of all atmospheric move- 

 ments and of processes in the formation of storm centres is infalli- 

 ble. It is generally understooi that our Weather Bureau claims 

 such infallibility, though Professor Hazen in another part of his 

 article seems to disclaim it, and though some of the unscientific 

 laity are inclined to believe that the whole orthodox theory of rain- 

 formation will yet have to be remodelled. 



Professor Hazen does not think my explanation of the point unier 

 consideration worth}' of notice, as he does not refer to it. This 

 explanation is as follows. The storm centre may remain stationary 

 over the place where the firing takes place until the storm is fully 

 established, because it is caused by the mingling of two currents 

 of air flowing in nearly opposite directions. At the commence- 

 ment, the new action set up is confined to the upper stratum of 

 the lower current and the lower stratum of the upper current. 

 These, mingling together, set up a rotary motion, but as a whole, 

 the air partaking of this motion moves neither very far east nor 

 . very far west, being acted on by opposing forces, one tending to 

 carry it eastward and the other westward. When, however, 

 large enough volumes of air become involved in the motion to 

 produce rain, the storm will move eastward along with the warm 

 current. As this is not orthodox philosophy as held by the scien- 

 tists of the Weather Bureau, Professor Hazen will have none of it. 

 But perhaps he will remember cases in which storm centres have 

 lingered long in one place, and. if so, this fact alone furnishes a 

 sufficient argument in refutation of his own 



There is only one other point in Professor Hazen's article that I 

 wish to notice, and that is this: he says, " One thing seems very 

 evident, that absolutely no rain can be obtained out of a dry at- 

 mosphere." This is an old argument the extreme tenuity of 

 which I have often shown. Professor Hazen well knows how I 

 have met it by showing that there are probably at all times suBi- 

 cient quantities of aqueous vapor flowing above us in air currents 



to make rain. He cannot refute my argument on this, point, nor 

 I believe, show that there is anything unreasonable in it, therefore 

 he very wisely ignores it. My argument is based on (he absolutely 

 certain fact that as much water must come to us from the ocean 

 as runs into the ocean from our rivers, and on the further fact, 

 demonstrated by Professor M. F. Maury, that most of the vapor 

 that forms our rains comes to us from the Pacific Ocean. Coming 

 from the Pacific, it necessarily comes in air currents which flow 

 above the mountains and high above the arid regions of the West. 

 Meteorologists will come nearer a solution of the problem of rain- 

 production when they recognize the fact that it is not the moisture 

 in the lower air east of those mountains and arid districts chat 

 gives us our rains, but that it is the rains formed mainly by 

 the condensation of the vapor from the Pacific that cause the 

 moisture. Edwaed Powers. 



Delavan, Wis , Sept. 26. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



Schliemann's Excavations. By Dr. C. Schuchhaedt. Trans, 

 from the German by Eugenie Sellers. New York, Macmil- 

 lan. $4. 



The object of this work is to give a succinct account of Dr. 

 Schliemann's discoveries, sufficient for most students of the sub- 

 ject, and presenting the net results in a single volume. The re- 

 ports heretofore made of the excavations, chiefly by Dr. Schlie- 

 mann himself, are contained in several different books published 

 at intervals, none of which contains a complete account of the 

 whole work, so that a good summary was much needed; and such 

 a summary Dr. Schuchhardt, with the approval of Schliemann 

 himself, has here given us. He has also taken account of the 

 discoveries that have been made by others, especially those of the 

 Greek Archaeological Society, while Drs. Schliemann and Dorpfeld 

 have given in an appendix reports of their excavations at Hissar- 

 lik last year; so that we get a complete account of all that has 

 been done. Mr. Waller Leaf contributes an introduction in which 

 he discusses certain points of interest, expressing in some cases 

 somewhat different views from those of Dr. Schuchhardt. Dr. 

 Schliemann's work was so enaphatically the result of his own per- 

 sonality, and his life was in itself so interesting, that Dr. Schuch- 

 hardt very properly begins his volume with a biogi'aphical sketch. 

 Schliemann was the son of a clergyman, and received excellent 

 schooling in early boyhood; but, owing to misfortunes in the 

 family, he was obliged to leave school and go to work to earn his 

 living. For several years his life was hard; but at last a firm in 

 Amsterdam detected his commercial abilities, and from that time 

 his advancement was rapid. The foundation of his large fortune 

 seems to have been laid in Russia during the Crimean war; but it 

 was not until several years later that he was able to retire from 

 business with a fortune sufficient to carry on the archaeological 

 researches which had been the dream of his life. The first sod 

 was turned at Hissarlik in 1870, and, as the excavations were con- 

 tinued with some interruptions until the great explorer's death 

 last year, they covered a period of twenty years. 



Of the importance of the work thus done there can be no doubt; 

 it was, as Mr. Loaf remarks, nothing less than the creation of pre- 

 historic Greek archaeology. Before Schliemann's excavations be- 

 gan, most scholars doubted the story of the Trojan war, maintain- 

 ing that it was a poetic fiction and that the personages represented 

 in the "Iliad ' and "Odyssey" were mythical, and there was 

 great uncertainty as to the site of Troy itself. Dr. Schliemann 

 has now uncovered the site of Troy just where Greek tradition 

 uniformly placed it; and, as the ruins show that the city was de- 

 stroyed by fire, its reduction by siege is highly probable. Thus 

 far only the citadel has been excavated ; but the massiveness of 

 its walls prove that it must have been the nucleus of a large and 

 powerful city, though the utensils and ornaments that have been 

 found indicate a lower stage of civilization than that of the pre- 

 historic cities on the European side of the sea. 



It is at these last-named cities, indeed, and especially at My- 

 cenee and Tiryns, that the most important discoveries have been 

 made. Tiryns, which stood nearest the sea, was first excavated, 

 and here Schliemann first had the assistance of Dr. W. Dorpfeld, 



