and Pannonia, and in both instances taxed the ingenuity of Augustus to reduce the suffering in Rome. Again, about A.D. 44, in the reign of Claudius, Italy suffered from crop failure and consequent famine, which put a special pressure upon the grain trade from Egypt and elsewhere. To-day the farmer of southern Italy is familiar enough with the scourge of scant rains and perishing crops. The failure of the late spring rains in 1922 so reduced the wheat crop that the Italian Government was forced to abolish the duty on imported grain. Wheat the ensuing winter was scarce and very dear; the far less palatable barley flour was widely used as a substitute, for even Tuscany did not wholly escape the evil. Thus the majority of the Mediterranean lands, apart from certain rainy westward-facing mountain slopes, had a narrow margin of precipitation between adequate and impoverished crops, between food and famine; and they constantly faced a shortage of water in summer for their irrigation ditches and domestic supply. The frequent threat of inadequate rains, the fickle character of the early and late showers which determined the length of the growing season, the powerlessness of the people to deduce any meteorological law, and their helplessness before the forces of nature, all conspired to unite rain and religion in the ancient Mediterranean mind. The chief gods, reflecting these climatic conditions, became weather gods, powerful to bestow or deny the lifegiving water from the sky. Zeus. For example, "Hurler of thunderbolts unfaltering, the most high Zeus," is the rain-giver of the Greek world, and is equipped with all the powers of a weather god. His epithets describe his activities. He is "showery Zeus," "cloud-compelling Zeus," "rainbringing Zeus," "Zeus the thunderer," "the gatherer of lightning," "Zeus the moistener," "Zeus the pourer forth," "god of the storm cloud." "From Olympus a cloud fares into heaven from the sacred air when Zeus spreadeth forth the tempest." He commands the winds and sets the rainbow in the sky. Clouds and rain, thunder and lightning, and the rain-loving oak grove are manifestations of his presence. The marriage of Zeus and Hera on the cloud-wrapped summit of Mount Ida in Phrygia was the union of earth and the fertilising rain. "Beneath them the divine earth sent forth new tender grass, and dewy lotus and crocus and hyacinth, thick and soft, that lifted them aloft from the ground. Therein they lay and were clad with a white cloud, whence fell drops of glittering dew." Throughout the Hellenic world, from Ionia to Sicily, and especially on the dry eastern side of Greece, supplications ascended to Zeus for the life-giving rain. On the Acropolis of Athens was an image of Earth (Ge) imploring Zeus with uplifted hands. The Attic prayer in time of drought has come down to us: "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, upon the grainlands of the Athenians and upon their pastures." To Zeus was attributed every sign of coming showers, such as the autumn lightning that heralded the end of the dry season. Therefore Athens had an altar to Zeus, Dispenser of Lightning, where for three months priests kept watch, looking northward towards Mount Parnes for the first flash denoting the presence of the god. And when they saw it lighten on the mountain slope near Harma and Phyle they sent a sacrifice to Delphi to Apollo, god of agriculture. Pelasgian Zeus the Thunderer had his sacred seat in the oak grove of Dodona in Epirus, on the rainy western side of the Pindus Mountains. There was the earliest shrine of the weather god, in a region where now almost daily thunderstorms occur during June and July, where the annual precipitation is 51 inches (1299 mm.), and where the great Rain-giver abundantly manifests his presence. Thence came the west wind, signalled by the lightning on Mount Parnes, which brought the rare summer thunderstorms to Attica and momentarily broke the long drought. Jupiter.-Jupiter, like the Hellenic Zeus, also Jupiter of the Latins and Etruscans, was in the historical period a weather god, though less conspicuously so in actual practice than his Greek counterpart, owing perhaps to the more reliable and abundant rains of Italy. As head of the Roman state he had important functions which tended to overshadow his meteorological offices, though violent thunderstorms and devastating strokes of lightning were regularly interpreted as omens for the Roman state. The Jupiter of the pre-Roman Latins and Sabines is only scantily revealed to us; yet his oldest sanctuary presents an interesting parallel to Baal of the springs and streams. Lavinium, the metropolis of Latium before the founding of Rome, had an aboriginal sanctuary of Jupiter Numicius or Jupiter Indiges on the river Numicius, whereby the Lavinians identified the creative power of Jove with the waters of this little stream as it irrigated the tillage land of the city. Jupiter Latiaris, chief god of the Latin League, revealed the symbol of the weather god in the lapis manalis or thunderbolt. As Etruscan dominion and cultural influence spread over Latium, Jupiter became identified with the Etruscan weather god Tina or Tinia, who embodied old Hellenic conceptions of the chief deity brought from the Asia Minor coast and was therefore modelled after the Greek Zeus, hurler of the thunderbolt. Attached to his worship in Etruria was a college of priests, the Fulgatores, whose office was to observe the lightning, its character, location, direction, and the season of the year when it occurred. They were in effect a weather bureau, reporting the indication of the thunderstorms which vitally concerned ancient Etruscan tillage. Zeus, transplanted from western Asia Minor to Etruria, needed little adjustment to the climatic conditions of the new environment, which were only a little better than his old ones. The epithets of the Roman god parallel those of Zeus. He is Jupiter Pluvius, or rainy; Uvidus, or wet; Imbricitor, or shower-sender; and Serenator, or giver of clear weather. He is Jupiter Fulgar, or Fulminator, in his power over the lightning, and Jupiter Tonitrualis, or Tonans, as hurler of the thunderbolt. He is also Jupiter Elicius, who elicits rain and lightning, worshipped with a ritual which probably embodied a rain-making ceremony. As in Greek literature rain was the water of Zeus, so in Roman literature it is frequently the Aqua Jovis or merely Jove, as when Virgil says, "Now Jove (rain) must be feared for the ripe grapes." The oak tree, which in its several varieties served as a rain gauge throughout the Mediterranean region, was sacred to Jove in all parts of Italy; oak groves originally surrounded his shrines and temples. Jove it was who sent the fructifying showers upon the thirsty fields and gardens; hence prayers to him were recommended to farmers as a condition of successful tillage. In times of drought noble Roman matrons used to walk barefoot in procession up the long slope of the Capitoline Hill to the temple of Jove the Thunderer, to pray for rain. So effective were their prayers that "the rain came down in bucketfuls, and all the women smiled though wet as rats. But now the gods do not come to our help, because we are no longer religious; so the fields lie barren," says Petronius. As the Latin Jupiter merged with the Greek Zeus in consequence of similar functions imposed upon the two gods by similar climatic conditions, so among the widely scattered Phoenician settlements of the Western basin the old Semitic Baalim, who had migrated from the slope of the Lebanon, retained their individuality so long as Carthage maintained its political power, but on its fall gradually merged into the equivalent Greek or Roman deity who acted as rain-giver or bringer of fertility to the fields. It suggests perhaps a very early contact between Carthage and the Italian folk that Baal of Carthage was regularly identified with Saturn, forerunner of Jove in the succession of Italian gods. Saturn was god, not of rain, but of the rain-given productivity of the fields; he embodied the effect rather than the natural cause. Baal, like Saturn, was appeased by human sacrifices, preferably of children, who in Carthage as in Tyre were immolated to him under his title of Moloch or King in times of drought or pestilence or unsuccessful He was worshipped throughout the immediate Carthaginian territory, and in Numidia, Mauretania, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain; and as Baal Hammon he was identified both with Zeus and Jupiter. war. (To be continued.) THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE CENTRAL ANDES1: AN IN 1920 the American Geographical Society of New York formulated a scheme for the advancement of geographical knowledge of Spanish America of which the book named below, with the accompanying M 1 Geography of the Central Andes. A Hand-book to accompany the La Paz Sheet of the ip of Hispanic America on the Millionth Scale. By Alan G. Ogilvie, M.A., B.Sc. (Oxon.). With an Introduction by Isaiah Bowman. Published by the American Geographical Society of New York, 1922. Price 3 dollars, or, with copy of the La Paz sheet, 4 dollars. La Paz sheet on the scale of 1/1,000,000, constitutes the first fruits. The long delay in the publication of a notice of the book here is in part due to the difficulty of finding space for the extended notice which it merits, in view of the present restricted issue of the S.G. M. The delay is, however, of less significance in view of the fact that the value of the book lies primarily in that it is of the nature of an experiment in a mode of presentation, rather than a setting forth of new facts. This is not to say that it does not contain material hitherto unpublished --for a considerable amount of such material is included. But its author states definitely in his preface that it is the result of an effort to draw together scattered information in such a fashion as to bring out "genetic relationships." Since on the one hand deliberate attempts of this kind in the English language are at least few, while on the other most geographers are agreed that the need for them is great, it seems justifiable to restrict this notice to a critical account of the method adopted, in place of attempting to summarise the mass of detail which the book contains. Two obvious possible criticisms-which indeed are met in the book itself may first be disposed of. The first is that, even within the limits of the present scheme of the American Geographical Society, it would seem hardly feasible that each sheet of the 1/M. map published should be accompanied by a hand-book on a similar scale to the present one without much overlapping. The second is that a map-sheet with fixed, predetermined limits in latitude and longitude does not in the nature of things constitute a unit on which a complete geographical study can be readily based. As regards the first of these, Mr. Ogilvie points out in his preface that the part of the Central Andes covered by the map has not been described in systematic fashion by any previous author, a point which is also elaborated by Dr. Bowman in his introduction. There are thus reasons why this particular area should receive special treatment, and the compilation of the map put much. valuable, and, in part, unpublished, material at the disposal of its author. The second difficulty is got over by the help of a sketch-map (Fig. 5), which shows the natural regions of the Central Andes as a whole inserted on an index map of the sheets of the 1/M. map. From this diagram it is seen that the natural regions recognised have a considerable extension outside the La Paz sheet, so that while the actual sheet has artificial limits the descriptions of the natural regions have a wide validity outside those limits. There is, however, a third difficulty which may, we fear, limit the usefulness of the book to those most likely to profit by studying it. In view of the statement contained on the title page we must admit that the author is within his rights in demanding-as he clearly doesthat the reader of the book must have the map-sheet at hand before he can read with complete satisfaction. Nor can we perhaps complain, under present conditions, that no copy of the map accompanies the book. At the same time, although a discount of one dollar is allowed to those who buy book and map simultaneously, the double purchase means a considerable outlay. Further, those who seek to obtain the book from a library may, we think, find it difficult to borrow the map at the same time, map-curators as a rule being somewhat unwilling to allow unmounted sheets out of their possession for any length of time. A general sketch-map of the main relief features would perhaps have helped to obviate this difficulty, by making the book more readily intelligible to those compelled to study it after a preliminary examination of the map in a library. At the same time, the two folded maps in colour, on the scale of 1/2,000,000, one showing Distribution of Population and the other Land Utilisation, do bring out the essential features. The body of the book is divided into nine chapters, entitled, in order, General View; Geological Structure and Land Forms; Minerals and Mines; The Ocean; The Climate; Drainage; Water Supply and Soils; The Natural Vegetation; Animal Life; The Inhabitants and their Adaptation to the Environment. The order follows very closely the lines of Dr. H. R. Mill's definition of geography as the exact and organised knowledge of the distribution of phenomena on the surface of the Earth, culminating in the explanation of the interaction of Man with his terrestrial environment," and of his conclusions as to the order in which the different distributions should be discussed. It must also be said that the last chapter represents, as it should do, a real "culmination," the account given therein of the successive development of civilisations on the high plateau, and of the interaction between man and his highly peculiar environment here, being extremely vivid and interesting. Accepting then the general order of presentation as both logical and in accordance with modern views as to the meaning of geography, we may proceed to look at some details. The opening paragraphs of Chapter 1 deal with three facts of physical history which "have been of chief importance in determining the distribution of life and the activities of man in the area." These are given as (1) the upheaval of a large block of the earth's crust resulting in a climate which is generally dry and cold; (2) the extensive mineralisation of the uplifted rocks; (3) the general levelling of the surface of the present highland, prior to its great upheaval, as a result of denudation and of the outflow of lava. These points are elaborated in the chapters which follow. In connection with general geographical method, one may note that in starting his general survey with these three events the author appears to assume that the reader has not only studied the map in detail, but has formulated so definite a picture of the whole area as to require little guidance from him in filling in details. When one bears in mind the difference in the amount of time required to read a description of an area with the help of a map, as compared with that |