have been unable to find one) in which either horse, ass, or other equine animal, had fewer than thirty-eight ribs. If a 34-ribbed race of horses ever existed, I think it ought to turn up as a variety now and then. But it does not; and, what is still more to the purpose, we do not find that any of the immediate allies of the horse have fewer than thirty-six ribs; though they may, as in the case of the ass, have only five lumbar vertebræ.
"Without wishing, in the least, to dogmatize, then, I must say that the zoölogical probabilities appear to me to be dead against M. Piétrement's hypothesis; and unless you tell me that the Sanskrit text must mean that Dirghatamas's horses had thirty-four ribs and no more, I shall take leave to doubt the existence of these 34-ribbed steeds.
"I am afraid I have troubled you with a very long letter, which does not come to much in the way of certainty after all. . . .
"I remain, yours very truly,T. H. Huxley."
I have little doubt that Prof. Huxley has solved the riddle. It is open to translate either the thirty-four, or thirty-four ribs; but, whether we adopt the one or the other rendering, it seems clear that the poet must have had some reason for mentioning that number. If thirty-four was the usual number of a horse's ribs in his time, then there seems little reason for giving the number. "Cut the ribs" would have conveyed the same meaning as "cut the thirty-four ribs." If, on the contrary, the number thirty-four was mentioned because it was exceptional, then the poet, and his commentators too, would have said more about the anomaly. Every thing becomes intelligible if we admit that, in cutting open the horse, two ribs were not to be cut, so that they might remain and keep the carcass together. In that case to mention the number of ribs that were to be cut had a purpose, though it is strange that tradition, which in India possesses such extraordinary tenacity in unimportant matters, should not have preserved the original purport of the words of Dirghatamas. I have looked in vain for a passage where the cutting of the thirty-four ribs in the horse-sacrifice is more fully described; but I ought to add that in the oldest descriptions of the sacrifice of other animals, preserved in the Aitareya-Brahmana and the Srauta-Sutras of Alvarayana, nothing it said of leaving two ribs undivided. "Twenty-six are his ribs," we read: "let him take them out in order; let him not spoil any limb."—Academy.
| GEOGRAPHICAL WORK OF 1874. |
AT the meeting of the American Geographical Society, held February 25, 1875, the annual address was delivered by Chief-Justice Daly, the President of the Society. Beginning with a brief survey of the remarkable physical phenomena of the year, including great falls of rain and snow, extreme and widely-distributed cold, earth-
