Volume 1 — BOOKS OF THE MONTH (continued 2)

Passing to the archæology, we must begin by gratefully recording the fact that at length an adequate description is available of the monuments as they exist to-day. Thanks to the maps, plans, and pictures, every detail is brought home to the reader; while he cannot complain that Mrs. Routledge's commentary, precise though it be, is ever dull. She is indeed to be congratulated on having composed a popular account that is likewise as far as it goes scientifically sound; though it is to be hoped that the whole collection of evidence, of which but a digest is presented here, will hereafter be published. The expedition was evidently at great pains to survey, catalogue, measure, photograph, and, so far as was necessary, actually disinter, the entire mass of remains, despite their great number and the considerable extent of country over which they are distributed. And fortunately the stonework is still there to be studied, since it cannot be easily removed or destroyed, as has mostly been the fate of the woodwork, namely, the carved human figures, twenty to thirty inches high, with their characteristic goatee beards and prominent ribs, and the tablets on which the script was carved. Yet, if not altogether demolished, the statues are in large part dethroned. Those at least that decorated the burial platforms of Cyclopean architecture that border the coast are all overthrown; how and why we can but guess. On the other hand, there is a certain volcanic hill with many huge figures still standing, both within the crater and along its outer skirts. It was here that all the images were quarried; and many exist in a half-finished condition, while some, including the largest of all, sixty-six feet in length, were perhaps never meant to be completely detached from the parent rock. Excavation at these quarries revealed the whole process of manufacture, and proved that with stone tools it was possible to hew the soft rock into shape, though the precise manner of the transportation and erection of the unwieldy monsters, while plainly creditable to human muscle, remains by no means easy to discern.

Who were the makers? What did they mean to represent? At this point we pass from description to explanation, from the ascertained to the purely conjectural. Certain it is that the present natives have no use for the statues, and are not only ignorant but likewise incurious about their origin. Even by Cook's time, namely, in 1774, though still standing, they were apparently ceasing to be respected; whereas Roggeveen, in 1722, rightly or wrongly, saw in them objects of an existing worship. Thus we seem to get at least a downward limit for the epoch during which they were part of the living culture, and this view is borne out by the relatively unweathered condition of some statues. It would look, then, as if the direct and not very remote ancestors of the present islanders were the image-makers, and not some mysterious extinct race, such as has often been postulated. Further, the pendant ear-lobes of the statues recall a practice hardly yet obsolete among the population of to-day.

The best argument of all, however, amongst those making for a connection with the indigenous culture is derived from the study of a remarkable bird-cult which it is a chief triumph of the expedition to have rescued from oblivion. Not only can it be thus shown to the point of demonstration that the rock-carvings occurring in a deserted village of stone houses on the south-western headland of the island represent the annual "bird-man" who got the first egg of a sacred bird, and so became himself highly sacred; but it can also be made a probable corollary that the statues of the image-mountain are memorials of bird-men, since it was close by that the bird-man must abide in strict seclusion for the five months in which his sacredness was at its height. Indeed, many are the clues which are afforded by a close examination of this curious custom. Thus it seems certain that the present cult which centres round the Sooty Tern is derived from the worship of the Frigate Bird as practised in far-off Melanesia. The Frigate Bird, too, seems to have suggested various symbols belonging to the script. The inference is that there is a Melanesian stratum in the population; though, as a Polynesian immigration must also be assumed in order to account for the language, responsibility for the culture as a whole must somehow be divided between the two parties. All these difficult questions, we fear, cannot be thrashed out within the limits of a brief review. Yet perhaps enough has been said to induce every student of the wider history of man not to miss a golden opportunity of learning that anthropology and romance are sisters.

SCIENCE

SOME WONDERS OF MATTER. By the Right Reverend J. E. Mercer. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 5s. net.

CHEMISTRY AND ITS MYSTERIES. By Charles R. Gibson. Seely, Service & Co. 5s. net.

THE REALITIES OF MODERN SCIENCE. By John Mills. The Macmillan Company. 10s. 6d. net.

England has a high tradition in books on popular science. Men like Faraday and Tyndall did not consider it beneath them to write for children and laymen, and their books on the elementary facts of science are models of their kind. Strangely enough—or naturally enough—the best expositors of the elements of a science are, in general, those who have themselves contributed to the advances of that science, while those who are professedly popularisers present the subject not only less correctly and logically but also less simply and pleasantly. The books before us confirm this opinion.

Mr. Gibson is a practised hand at writing books for children, the volume before us being the sixth of a series. He has the merit that he attempts to bring before the reader the experimental basis of the science of chemistry and some of its historical aspects, and does not make a series of dogmatic statements without reference to the researches on which they rest, as does Bishop Mercer. He describes many experiments, and gives diagrams to illustrate them. The book covers a wide field of interesting and, for the most part, elementary chemical phenomena. The chief fault which we have to find is with the style in which it is written. We find the imaginary questions put to the writer by boys and girls distinguished as big, little, facially peculiar, and so on, irritating, and we very much doubt if his patronising manner will find favour with most boys, who, we believe, prefer to be treated as friends who happen not to know. We do not pretend to Mr. Gibson's knowledge of children, but base our criticism on the fact that Faraday and most of his successors at the Royal Institution have managed to interest and instruct their juvenile audiences without this painfully evident condescension.

Bishop Mercer's method of striving to excite the wonder of his young readers is based upon a liberal use of notes of exclamation (seldom less than three on a page, and sometimes three together, for extra effect) and of the words "wonder" and "wonderful," together with the constant citation of very large numbers, which fill him with awe—"A million is bad enough with its six cyphers. But eighteen of them—that is awful—it is a million million million!" The machinery of nature, as revealed by modern science, does not impress him as do these rows of cyphers. If there were any serious attempt to show how they have been arrived at we should think more highly of the educational value of the book. As it is, the information is often incorrect on quite simple matters—water does not occupy "exactly" (or approximately) "the same space as before" after sugar has been added to it; hydrogen is not often regarded, in these days when it has been solidified, as a metal. Often the book is most misleading, as in the description of how the author saw a man's ribs by X-rays when the "machine" was put the other side of the man in question. No mention is made of any phosphorescent screen, and the inexperienced reader is led to infer by the analogy given that he actually saw through the man. The style is vague and slipshod in the extreme, a typical sentence being, "The elasticity of the atoms is so perfect that they always bang about just the same." We will not criticise the Bishop's theology, or his philosophy, which insists that "what you really see is not the matter of the tree, but the ether-quiverings which that matter throws off." We will, however, take it upon ourselves to suggest that, if he should decide to write another book on elementary science, he should model himself rather upon Faraday's "Lectures Upon the Physical Forces" than upon an American temperance lecture.

Mr. Mills' book on The Realities of Modern Science is in a different class from the two already noticed, and is intended for adult readers. It gives a sketch of modern conceptions of the composition of matter, the electron theory, and the recent experimental work on the magnitude of molecules and electrons. The early chapters of the book are devoted to a very brief but excellent treatment of certain aspects of the history of physical science. A great merit of the book is that it devotes particular attention to the recent important advances in molecular physics, which are neither yet included in the text-books nor easily available in popular form. We may mention especially the work of Millikan on the electronic charge, that of the Braggs and Moseley on X-ray spectra, and the photographs taken by C. T. R. Wilson (whose name is not, however, mentioned) of the paths of α {a} and β {b} particles and of X-rays. The style is simple and sober, and the author, who hails from the research laboratories of the Western Electric Company, wisely leaves the results which he describes to produce their own impression. The book is, of course, written for more advanced readers than the others here noticed, but, all the same, an intelligent schoolboy with a smattering of scientific knowledge would, in all probability, prefer it to the books written expressly for his benefit. The adult reader is not likely to find a better presentation of the more striking aspects of modern physics.