94 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No. 497 



beneficial. In the former it will do no good whatever. This is 

 mainly because in the former infection takes place probably by 

 means of spores disseminated by the wind, so that whole fields 

 soon become infected. It cannot be denied that an efl'ectual 

 remedy for wheat rust is still a great desideratum. 



Joseph F. James. 



Washington, D. C, Aug. 6. 



The Ancient Libyan Alphabet. 



In Science, July 15, Dr. Brinton has some remarks on this sub- 

 ject, which I have read with surprise. The old Libyan alphabet, 

 he says, " appears to have been in common use among the Berber 

 tribes of north Africa long before the foundation of Carthage (1), 

 . . . and in its forms is almost entirely independent of the Phoe- 

 nician letters (3). It is composed of consonants called tifinar (3), and 

 vowel-points, known as tiddebakin. The latter are simple dots (4), 

 the former are the lines of a rectangle, more or less complete (5). 

 Several of them are found in the oldest Etruscan inscriptions (6). 

 . . . The writers who have given especial attention to this little- 

 known subject are Faidherbe, Duveyrier, Halevy, Bissuel, and, 

 recently, Dr. CoUignon (7)." 



To avoid repetition, and facilitate reference, I have numbered 

 the points in this passage on which I should like to offer a few 

 observations. 



1 and 2. What authority has Dr. Brinton for referring this 

 alphabet to pre-Carthagenian times, and for stating that its forms 

 are almost entirely non-Phoenician ? I have hitherto regarded the 

 Punic origin of the Libyan letters as an established fact accepted 

 by all epigraphists of weight, and notably by Mommsen, who un- 

 hesitatingly recognizes their Semitic descent : " The Libyan or 

 Numidian alphabet now as formerly in use amongst the Berbers 

 in writing their non-Semitic language is one of the innumerable 

 offshoots of the primitive Arameean type. In some of its details 

 it seems even to approach that type more closely than does the 

 Phoenician itself. We ai'e not, however, therefore to conclude 

 that the Libyans received it from immigrants older than the 

 Phoenicians. It is here as in Italy, where certain obviously more 

 archaic forms do not prevent the local alphabet from being re- 

 ferred to Greek types. All that can be inferred is that the Libyan 

 alphabet belongs to the Phcenician writing older than the epoch 

 when were composed the Phoenician inscriptions that have sur- 

 vived to our time" (History of Rome, iii. , 1). 



It follows that the Numidian ancestors of the Berbers received 

 their writing system from the Carthaginians, earliest Phoenician 

 settlers on the north African sea-board, and, consequently, that the 

 Libyan alphabet had no currency " long before the foundation of 

 Carthage." The archaic forms referred to by Mommsen were the 

 forms in use in Tyre and Sidon in pre-historic times, whereas the 

 extant Phoenician inscriptions date from historic times; hence 

 the discrepancies between the latter and those preserved by the 

 Berbers, most conservative of all peoples. 



S. Not the consonants alone, but the whole system (mainly, of 

 course, consonantal as being Semitic) is called "tifinar," or rather 

 "tiflnagh." The sounds 3/1 and rh interchange in the Libyan 

 dialects (Ohet and Rhet; Melghigh and Melrhirh, etc.), so that it 

 is not always easy to decide which is the original sound. But 

 here there is no doubt that gh is organic; and Barlh, for instance, 

 always writes Tefinagli, \>\\iraX Tefinaghen : "There was in par- 

 ticular a man of the name of Sama, who was very friendly with me. 

 On reading with him some writing in Tefinaghen, or the native 

 Berber character, I became aware that this word signifies nothing 

 more than tokens or alphabet. For as soon as the people beheld 

 my books, and observed that they all consisted of letters, they ex- 

 claimed repeatedly, ' Tefinaghen — ay — Tefinaghen ! ' " (Travels, 

 v., p. 116). There is, however, more in this word than Barth 

 was aware of. When stripped of the common Berber prefix te, it 

 reveals the "Finagh," i.e., "Phoenician," or "Punic" origin of 

 the letters in their very name. Note the stress still falling on the 

 root^M, as in Pceni. 



4. F. W. Newman explains Tidebdkka (pi. TidebdkTcen) to mean 

 " a dot on or under the letter" (.Vocah.), in fact any diacritical 

 mark of the kind, and not merely vowel signs. Some, however, 



are doubtless used to voice the consonants, as in Hebrew. Like 

 other Semitic alphabets, Tefinagh had originally no vowels, but 

 only three breathings, transformed in some systems (Greek, Italic) 

 to pure vowels, in others (Cufic, Arabic) to semi-vowels and 

 vocalic bases. But all this merely tends to strengthen the view 

 that the Libyan is a Semitic alphabet. 



5. This statement is to me unintelligible. In the published 

 Libyan alphabets (Fr. Ballhorn, " Alphabete orientalischer und 

 occidentalischer Sprachen," p. 8; Hanoteau, "Essai de grammaire 

 de la langue tamachek," and others) curves occur quite as fre- 

 quently as straight lines, while acute decidedly prevail over right- 

 angles. Of the eight letters copied by Barth (I. , p. 274) two only 

 can be described as "more or less complete rectangles," forms 

 which are certainly less common than, for instance, in Hebrew 

 and Estranghelo. 



6. It would be strange if resemblances did not occur between 

 the Libyan and the characters of "the oldest Etruscan inscrip- 

 tions," seeing that both have a common Semitic origin, the former 

 directly through the Phoenician, the latter indirectly through the 

 archaic Greek. But such resemblances obviously lend no color to 

 Dr. Brinton's peculiar views regarding Libyco-Etruscan linguistic 

 afiinities. 



7. Of the writers here referred to, Faidherbe and Halevy alone 

 can be regarded as specialists. On the other hand, there are 

 serious omissions, such as Dr. Oudney, who in 1823 first discovered 

 the existence of the Berber alphabet ;.F. W, Newman, "Patriarch 

 of Berber i)hilology ;" Mommsen and Hanoteau, as above; lastly, 

 A. Judas, who was the first to clearly establish the Phoenician 

 origin of these characters in a paper entitled ' ' De I'Ecriture libyco- 

 berber," contributed to the Revue Archeologique for September 

 1863. A. H. Keanb. 



Broadhurst Gardens, London, N. W. 



BOOK-EEVIEWS. 



Handbook for the Department of Geology in the U. S. National 

 Museum. Parti. Geognosy. — The Materials of the Earth's 

 Crust. By George P. Meeeill, Washington, Government 

 Printing Office, 1893. 89 p. 13 pi. 

 The U. S. National Museum is probably the greatest institution 

 of its kind in this country. The museums located in New York, 

 Cambridge, Boston, Philadelphia, and other large cities present to 

 the residents of those places and to students many facilities for 

 study. This is particularly the case with the American Museum 

 of Natural History in New York and the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology in Cambridge. But neither one of these has been planned 

 upon so extensive a scale, or is destined to attain such mammoth 

 proportions, as the National Museum at Washington. The coun- 

 try at large is familiar with some things to be found at the 

 museum from the numerous expositions at which displays of its 

 treasures have been made; but no one who has not visited and 

 lingered long in its great but crowded quarters at the National 

 Capital can adequately realize the broad foundation upon which 

 it is based, or the immense variety and scope of its collections. 

 There are gathered together here materials which cover all human 

 arts and all the natural sciences — anthropology in its widest 

 sense, from the rude, chipped-flint implement of palaeolithic man 

 to the delicate Sevres china of civilized man; rocks and fossils. 

 from the most ancient formations to the most recent; animal 

 forms from the minutest insect that flies to the hugest creature of 

 land or sea. Scarcely an object, indeed, in which man has had 

 aught to do, or to find interest in, but is to be found here. 



The collections are not, either, lying idle. A large corps of 

 curators is constantly at work, either arranging the old collec- 

 tions or studying and comparing the new. The results of these 

 studies appear from time to time in the Proceedings of the Museum 

 — a publication scarcely known to the public at large even by 

 title, on account of its limited circulation — or else in the Annual 

 Reports of the Museum, which are more widely known from being 

 distributed as / congressional documents. Unfortunately, these 

 last usually appear from two to three years after the date they 

 are stated to be reports for. 



In the early days, when the Smithsonian Institution was the 



