366 GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE ■ 



purely oceanic tides, until in the distant future both shall come to an 

 equality, with a length of 55 of our present days. An important point 

 in the proof that oceanic tides would affect the day and month in the 

 same sense as the tide in the plastic mass is given us as a "fact" (p. 

 269). The author's success in putting mathematical argument into plain 

 English compels one to regret that he did not attempt this point also. 

 To look back is to see that day and month must once have been shorter 

 than now. Indeed, an early date sees them again equal and but four or 

 five of our hours long. The moon then swung in so small an orbit as 

 almost to graze the earth, suggesting its origin by rupture of a parent 

 body under the indefinitely growing amplitude imposed on the solar tide 

 wave by that rotation period. Confirmation is found in the present ele- 

 ments of the lunar orbit. 



If such a history is not inferred for the satellites of other planets, we 

 at least see the influence of solar tides in checking or delaying birth of 

 satellites for the nearer planets and in their coincidence of month and 

 day. Saturn's stony meteor rings lie just within the distance where the 

 planet's tide-raising force would shatter a small satellite to fragments. 

 Nebulae and binary stars are scanned and illuminated with the light of 

 this tide-raising force, which is seen to produce far-reaching results 

 throughout the universe. M. S. W. J. 



From Sea to Sea. Letters of Travel. By Rudyard Kipling. Two vol- 

 umes. New York : Doubleday & McClure Company. 1899. Pp.880. 

 $2.00. 



These two volumes, containing the letters of travel in India, Burma, 

 Japan, and the United States, together with sketches of Calcutta and 

 Lahore life, are published under the author's private seal of the sacred 

 Swastika as a defense and protest against unauthorized editions which had 

 appeared in this country. Mr Kipling has edited and revised the matter, 

 and, as he has revisited Japan and resided for several years in the United 

 States since the letters of travel from those countries were written, it may 

 be presumed that there have been modifications. 



Although written from the Anglo-Indian standpoint for Anglo-Indian 

 readers, nothing could be more enjoyed by the globe-trotter, whom he so 

 openly despises and ridicules, than Mr Kipling's accounts of his visits to 

 out of-the-way places in the native states of India. These letters are 

 plainly the note and sketch book from which came many scenes of "the 

 Naidahka." The dak bungla at Joohpur, with its trusting commercial 

 travelers, is easily recognized ; also the deserted ruins of Chitor and the 

 dreadful "dull, blue tank sunk between walls of timeless masonry," and 

 yet Boondi's intricate, rock-wrought palace, with the hanging gardens, 

 its courts and gates, and everywhere the unseen eye of the zenana 

 women. "The howling globe-trotters," who infest India in the cold 

 weather to Mr Kipling's discomfort, will not be inclined to follow him to 

 these places of strong local color and acute discomfort; surely not that 

 globe-trotter who pronounced "Jeypore" with an "accent on the first 

 syllable, if you please," to the derision of Mr Kipling. 



Yet, when turned an " insolent globe-trotter himself," Mr Kiplingglibly 



