Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/247

 O*B. x. SEPT. 20, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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which could not strictly be used in dactylic verse.

However, in lines 611 and 612 of this same fifth ' Distinctio ' Hildebertus is thrust into verse by the summary process of ending the hexameter with Hilde-, and beginning the pentameter with bertus.

EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

STAMP COLLECTING AND ITS LITERATURE FORTY YEARS AGO (9 th S. x. i, 172). H. must be unfamiliar with recent philatelic litera- ture. The unique 1 cent British Guiana of 1856 (ship in oblong rectangle) has been known for nearly a quarter of a century. It was brought under the notice of the late Edward L. Pemberton in 1878, and is fully described by Judge Philbrick, K.C., in the Philatelic Record for July, 1889. The only member of the 1850 series (value in a circle) that can be reckoned a rarity of the first class is the 2 cents, rose. In the London Philatelist for February, 1900, Mr. E. D. Bacon gives an interesting account of all the known specimens of this stamp, a pair of which changed hands in 1897 for 650/. Several copies of the Brattleboro local have appeared at auction sales. The Velayer envelopes of 1653 can hardly be counted among stamps.

As my former note referred only to pub- lications issued or begun not later than 1862, 1 did not mention the well-known Stamp Collector's Magazine, the first number of which appeared in February, 1863. This

B)riodical was at no time edited by the late r. J. E Gray. P. J. ANDERSON.

University Library, Aberdeen.

CHESS PLAYING : A LEGEND (9 th S. ix. 248, 293, 398, 512 ; x. 212). Can any one tell me where Retzsch's celebrated picture of ' The Chess Players ' is ? WM. THOS. BLEASE.

MONASTIC SHEEP-FARMING (9 th S. x. 47, 176). We may see all about Inhoc or Inhoke in the ' New English Dictionary.'

J. T. F.

Winterton, Doncaster.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Nearer East. By D. G. Hogarth, M.A.

(Heinemann.)

THE titles given to books are too often inexpressive, if not misleading. It is one of the minor utilities, we trust, of these notices of books that they serve to convey to possible purchasers some definite idea of the scope and character of the works examined. Any one who is acquainted with Mr. Hogarth's researches in the Levant, as one of the " wandering scholars" who have gone forth from Oxford to

gather up relics of the past, might very possibly expect that the present book would be a record of antiquarian and classical discovery. But he will find nothing of this kind here. As a matter of fact, it is an elaborate treatise on physical geography. Its aim, as the author announces, is "to present the causative influence of geographical conditions upon man in a certain region." This region is that somewhat arbitrarily denned as 'The Nearer East,' which may be taken roughly as embracing all that

gart of Asia lying west of a line drawn Irom the aspian Sea to the Indian Ocean, and extending beyond to Greece, Egypt, and Arabia. Through this great intermediate territory all communication between Occident and Orient must always lie, whence its high political importance.

Mr. Hogarth's work falls into two divisions. In the first he gives a minutely scientific account of the surface aspect of this portion of the globe, its depressions and mountain systems, its contour and structure, watersheds and rivers, plateaus and alluvial plains in a word, all the physical features of its terrestrial crust, together with its atmo- spheric and climatic conditions. All these details are valuable as being the results of personal obser- vation, and are set out with abundance of illustra- tion in the way of maps and mapkins, " bathy- orographical " and otherwise, which will be esteemed by the scientific student. As the book belongs to "The Regions of ther World" series, this matter is all in place. The lover of the humanities will natur- ally turn with more interest to the second part, which deals with the subject in its reflex influence upon man. Human life, however, is affected not so much by the direct influence of physical con- ditions as, indirectly, by what we call scenery; its character is primarily determined by climatic phenomena, which, in turn, are the result of the "relief" or configuration of the country. Even religious beliefs are said to be in large measure conditioned by geographical facts. The great centres of both civilization and religion have always been those districts whose climate and soil have been favourable in providing man with abundance of food on easy terms ana consequent leisure. Such were the well-watered Mesopotamia, the garden strip of the Nile, the plains of Northern India, and the river valleys of Central China. The keen intel- lect and rationalizing faculty of the Persians have been stimulated by the dry, saline climate of the

Elateau on which they dwell ; while, on the other and, the author holds that the religious sense of the Arab has been enfeebled by the meagre con- ditions of his sandy desert. On this latter point Sir Richard Burton and Mr. Doughty would hardly agree with him. We should like to hear something more about the Ghegs, a tribe of Northern Albania, who are said to speak a language which was a pre- historic offshoot of the Indo-European family before the Greek and Latin parted company. Mr. Hogarth's learned chapters are written in attractive style, though it is rather too much in the manner of the cricket reporter to say that "milk and dates together are responsible for human life" in the Syrian and Arabian deserts, when he merely means that they are the staple food of those parts.

Chr. Fr. Grieb's Dictionary of the English and

German Languages. By Arnold Schroer, Ph.D.

Vol.11. German and English. (Frowde.)

No more than six months has elapsed between the

appearance of the first and that of the second