Septembee 11, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



333 



orj^ of the earlier and vanished worshippers 

 was at best a dim tradition, and the facile 

 imagination of the Greeks had built up the 

 whole beautiful legend, every element of the 

 surrounding scenery adding its portion of 

 suggestion, and it is marvellous how all 

 parts of the story still linger in the valley. 



As the grand missionary, artist and geolo- 

 gist, van Lennep, from whom I have obtained 

 most of this account,* who in all his travels 

 in Asia Minor collected carefully and la- 

 belled carefully, and sent valuable material 

 to his Alma Mater, Amherst, was climbing 

 to the statue, his guide, a cake-seller by the 

 roadside, said : '' There is a tradition that 

 this statue was once a woman, whose chil- 

 dren were killed, and she wept so that God 

 changed her to stone. They say that her 

 tears make a pond down there, and still keep 

 it full." 



All the people of the region, ignorant and 

 learned, agree in this, while all travellers 

 have called this the statue of Cybele. 



Their name for the valley, Nif, is a cor- 

 ruption of Nymphio, as Homer says, ' the 

 couches of the divine nymphs.' Sipylus, 

 the name of the mountain to this day, was 

 also the name of the oldest son of Niobe. 



Mobe was the daughter of Tantalus. Tan- 

 talus, from raAavreuw, to balance, is a rock 

 poised in the air, an allusion to the ledges 

 overhanging the statue, and threatening to 

 fall and crush it. 



That she is the mother of many children 

 m.ay be a reminiscence from Cybele, the All- 

 mother, and the mention of the couches of 

 the divine nymphs seems to suggest some 

 ancient nature worship of the valley. The 

 children slain by the arrows of Phcsbus are 

 the masses of rock dislodged from the cliffs 

 around her by the action of sun and rain 

 and forming the great talus at the foot of 

 the bluff. 



" They lie unburied on the plain," Homer 

 tells us, " till on the tenth day the heavenly 



*Asia Minor, II., 300. London, John Murray, 1870. 



gods bury them," as the fallen rock quickly 

 disintegrates under the influence of the 

 weather in this warm climate. The Greek 

 word, Niobe, connects itself with the pour- 

 ing of water and the falling of snow (vt^tu 

 v{tztw and vLfoj)^ so a Greek impersonation 

 of the drip from the marble cliff upon the 

 ancient rock sculpture might easily have 

 acquired the name of Niobe, the weeping 

 one. 



" It seems, thus," says van Lennep, " that 

 this sculpture was executed in a very re- 

 mote antiquity, to represent Cybele, the 

 mother of the gods, or some form of nature- 

 worship, that the water drip from the rock 

 above gave it, from the first, the same 

 striking watermark which it still bears, 

 maintained by the same cause, and that 

 this appearance suggested to the lively im- 

 agination of the Greek the whole myth of 

 Niobe — her tears, her sorrows, her strange 

 transformation, her perpetual weeping ; so 

 this most ancient statue is not an image 

 sculptured to represent this story of Mobe, 

 but is itself the very original from which 

 the story sprung." It is thus an impressive 

 testimonial of the vast importance of the 

 loose bond by which the second molecule of 

 CO2 is held combined in calcic bicarbonate. 



lot's wife. 



Looking down on that most marvellous 

 of all lakes — the Dead Sea, the Lacus As- 

 phaltites of the Eomans — the sea of Lot of 

 the Arabs, still stands the great column of 

 salt into which Lot's wife was changed. 



" She was changed into a pillar of salt," 

 says Joseph us, " for I have seen it, and it 

 remains to this day." 



And Irenseus explains how it came to 

 last so long with all its members entire, 

 because " when one was dissolved it was 

 renewed by miracle." It was, in fact, the 

 geological miracle of erosion. 



The column looks down from the plain 

 of Sodom, and on the great southern bay 



