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 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 269 Allah holds that only vegetables can grow, and that if the mine had existed it would not have disappeared. It is needless to say that Mr. Le Strange's work is in the highest degree scholarly and accurate. Perhaps one may ask why ' the philosopher Balinas ' on p. 98 is identified with Pliny, but on p. 240 with Apollonius of Tyana. On the former page he is said to have constructed a bath at Caesarea for Caesar, on the latter to have constructed a mirror in Alexandria for Alexander, whence he could perceive all that was going on in Constantinople. Since a person with the powers of Dumas's Cagliostro is required for the latter operations he may well be credited with the former. Indeed, the connexion of Apollonius with a bath is fairly clear ; Yaqut guesses that a place named Bulunyas near Emesa was called after Balinas. The Arabic form of Apollonius is not far from fiaXavflov and balneum. D. S. Margoliouth. Visitations of Religious Houses, vol. ii, pt. i. {The Lincoln Record Society/, vol. xiv.) Edited by A. Hamilton Thompson. (Horncastle : Morton, 1918.) Mr. Hamilton Thompson is extending his admirable work to the epis- copate of Bishop Alnwick, whose visitations between 1436 and 1449 will occupy two volumes, the first of which has now appeared. The editor's plan is to take the houses visited in alphabetical order, and in this volume he deals with them from Ankerwyke to Littlemore. Thirty-five institu- tions were visited, of which four were secular colleges and one, Brackley, a hospital. It happens that the important religious houses of the Lincoln diocese for the most part belong to the second half of the alphabet ; the chief abbeys here are Bardney, Crowland, Eynsham, and Leicester. Mr. Thompson praises the bishop for his zeal in visitation, but at least fourteen regular houses within his jurisdiction which we had a right to expect in this volume have been overlooked, nob to speak of many hospitals and colleges. These, however, seem to have been subject to visitation only under special conditions. Brackley was starting a new career with fresh statutes, and the four colleges of secular canons were in sad disorder. Mr. Thompson's account of Bishop Alnwick adds much to our know- ledge of his career. It includes an itinerary drawn from his register, which shows that the diocese of Lincoln, unlike such sees as Canterbury and Winchester, was not provided with episcopal manors distributed at convenient intervals over its area. Besides residences in and near Lincoln the bishop had only three to which he regularly resorted, Liddington in Rutland, Buckden in Huntingdonshire, and Wooburn in Buckinghamshire. Not to speak of Bedfordshire and his half of Hertfordshire, this left him without a house in the three larger counties of Oxford, Northampton, and Leicester, though some points in these could be reached conveniently. Bushmead Priory, for instance, is only a few miles from Buckden, yet it received no visit. But for the western side of the diocese only a rare progress, needing elaborate preparation, could be arranged, and we cannot wonder that the outlying religious houses did not receive more than one visit, if that, during Alnwick's episcopate.