20 NOVEMBER 1909, Page 11

Why and What at the British Museum. By Lettice Bell.

(Morgan and Scott. is. 6d. net)—It is quite true that, as Mr. Campbell Morgan " whispers " in his introduction, "lots of pastors, parents, and teachers" who go round the galleries of the Museum with this book in hand "will know more when they go home than they do now." Miss Bell takes occasion of various objects, as busts of Caesars, statues, models of temples, obelisks, and " antiquities " in general, to give a variety of information about history, especially Biblical history, which she seeks thus to illustrate. We may remark that in the legend which was related to Herodotus at Memphis the animals which destroyed the bow- strings were field-mice, not "rats," as we find it stated here. There is something incongruous in speaking of Nimrod as the grandson of Ham, and Identifying Semiramis with Diana ; but it is more than incongruous to speak of "Diana" as a Greek name, and to say that it is equivalent to " Venus " in Latin.