Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/421

 Reviews. 367

translator has forgotten that, among the Teuto-Gothic races,

the sun was female and the moon male, in contradistinction

to the classical conventions. Lastly, in stanza 2 on page 24,

"Kjdll" is rendered by " KioU," as though it were a proper

name. This may be intended, though we know of nothing to

support such a theory, and it seems obvious that "KJ611" means

a keel or ship, and, in accordance with the usual interpretation,

refers to Naglfar mentioned in the preceding stanza. These are

only slight blemishes, but I think it well to point them out, with

a view to their removal if, as I trust, a reprint of this translation

should be called for.

Albanv F. Major.

The Zonal-Belt Hypothesis. A New Explanation of the Cause of the Ice Ages. By Joseph T. Wheeler. Phila- delphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1908. 8vo, pp. 401.

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. The book offers much more than is promised, for, in connection with an attempted explanation of the Ice Age and its disappearance, there is given a collection and new explanation of many myths and legends from all over the world, and notably of the creation myths of Asia and Europe. The author summarizes his views very pithily (p. 3) as follows : — " It is proposed in this work to show that a vast amount of evidence exists which proves that throughout the geological ages up to recent time our earth was girt with belts of planetesimal or gaseous matter. . . . They were the cause of the Ice Ages. Primitive man saw the last remnants of these strange sights in the sky, and the echo of his thought in the form of mythology has sounded down through the lapse of centuries." It is of course true that in ancient geological times the northern part of the earth was warm, with a tropical fauna and flora which has since disappeared, and that subse- quently the whole of the northern hemisphere was covered with an ice sheet. The cause of this remarkable change of climate Mr. Wheeler, following some eminent geologists, finds in a theory first mooted by Tyndall and now further expanded by the author, —