Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/579

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.
561

ancient Egyptian temples; but the illustrations of the author's theory are drawn, besides these, from several other sources. The determination of the stars to which some of the Egyptian temples, sacred to a known divinity, were directed opened the way to a study of the astronomical basis of parts of the mythology—which, however, the author has wisely left to the Egyptologists to follow up. The essay begins with a review of the astronomical knowledge and ideas of the Egyptians as disclosed in their inscriptions and emblems. An attempt is then made to show that they would learn to pay special regard to certain stars and their heliacal rising as connected with their seasons, and, as they advanced in knowledge, to the equinoxes and solstices.

A study is made of six Egyptian temples which were apparently oriented with reference to the solstices, with a detailed study of the great temple of Karnak. Attention is next given to temples which appear to have been placed with reference to certain stars, in which the change of apparent position occasioned since the temples were built by the precession of the equinoxes has to be considered. Many such temples are found directed to several stars. As connected with these coincidences and essential to their rational explanation, the association of these stars with the gods of the temples is discussed, and this brings in questions of mythology, the origin of the constellations, the zodiac, sun worship, the schools of astronomy, etc. These features are compared with data of the Babylonian astronomy, and the origin of the whole is sought. The book is curious and suggestive, and can not fail to be helpful to all students of ancient man and the beginnings of science.


GENERAL NOTICES.

In Hallucinations and Illusions[1] the fallacies of perception are studied by Mr. Parish in the light of the data furnished by the International Census of Waking Hallucinations of the Sane. While examining the books on the general subject the author found that, as a rule, only single aspects of it were treated, such as fallacies of perception occurring under morbid conditions or in dreams, while little or no attention was given to the waking hallucinations of healthy persons; in fact, very few data had been collected to furnish the basis for an inquiry into this aspect. The requisite data have now been obtained by the International Congress of Psychology, and the subject has undergone some discussion in that body; and it has seemed a good time to review, as a preliminary inquiry, the whole field of sensory delusion, to indicate its relations to normal or "objective" perception, and to elucidate the common organic principle which underlies alike normal and fallacious perception. This is what is undertaken in this book. Fallacious perception is considered as affected by various pathological and physiological states, and, as to the physiological process in it, its factors, contents, initiation, and manifestations, with a summary, an appendix containing narratives of waking hallucinations collected by Baron von Schrenck Notzing, tables compiled from the censuses, and indexes of authors and subjects.

For the student of Nature's humbler efforts in the mammalian line, Mr. Ingersoll's series of sketches[2] of the habits and ways of some of our commoner "wild neighbors" will prove instructive as well as delightful reading. The author is a well known contributor of natural-history papers to the magazines, some of the chapters in this volume in fact being made up in part from material


  1. Hallucinations and Illusions. A Study of the Fallacies of Perception. By Edmund Parish. New York: Imported by Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 390. Price, $1.35.
  2. Wild Neighbors. Outdoor Studies in the United States. Illustrated by Ernest Ingersoll. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 297. Price, $1.50.