1921 301 Short Notices Any student of early history who might be attracted either by the title Die Herkunft und Geschichte des Arischen Stammes (Berlin : Arier- Verlag, 1920), or by the author's name, Karl Georg Zschaetzsch, may form some idea of the character of the book from the details given in an English prospectus sent along with it, in which the price is stated as 25s. The author, it is claimed, has traced the history of the Aryan races back as fa* as 29,500 years ago, and ' all the interesting details of the political life and the occurrences in the original home of the Aryans are brought before the eyes of the reader '. He has shown that ' the Christian festivals and the Solstice celebration ' have no solar basis, but commemorate ' important events going back to a period of more than 13,000 years ago '. More particularly he has thrown a new light on the history of family names and names of places, and has shown that many of the former ' can boast of the venerable age of 16,000 years '. The book, in fact, had its origin in the author's study of his own surname, and mainly consists of a wild heaping together of names from all quarters of the Aryan world and elsewhere with a defiance of scientific method which is quite indescribable. W. A. C. Mr. J. T. Fowler has revised his edition of Adamnani Vita S. Columbae (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1920) which originally appeared in 1894 ; and as it was then reviewed in our columns x it will be unnecessary to say much about it now. A short new preface has been added. The notes have been removed from the foot of each page of text and are printed together at its conclusion ; and they have been brought up to date by the inclusion of references to some important works which have been published since 1904, viz. Bury (J. B.), Life of St. Patrick (1905) ; Plummer (C), Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (1910) ; and Gwynn (J.), The Book of Armagh. Occasionally new and important matter is introduced at the cost of the displacement of some of the older text, as may be seen by comparing p. 20, § 11, with p. xxiii, § 11, of the first edition. F. E. W. In King Alfred's Books (London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920), Bishop Browne aims at setting forth ' fo the English of the twentieth century the books which King Alfred translated or set others to translate from the Latin for his English subjects in the ninth century '. With this purpose he has compiled a series of extracts from various English translations of the Anglo-Saxon renderings of St. Augus- 1 Ante, x. 554.
