The Domestication of the Cormorant in China and Japan by Berthold LauferReview by: Esson M. GaleJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Sep., 1932), pp. 267-269Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/593038 .

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Gale, The Cormorant in China and Japan 267

Latter Jumdda 18, for the 8th (which by the way falls on Tuesday rather than Wednesday), which he makes equivalent to Dec. 11. Ibn-al-Athir assigns the same date as ibn-al-QalAnisi; Matthew of Edessa chooses December 5, Fulcher of Chartes, December 12. In all probability the gentleman died Latter Jumdda 18, or Dec. 10. Wa-Alldhu a'lam.!

The Algebra of Omar Khayyam. By DAOUD S. KASIR. Contribu- tions to Education: Teachers College, Columbia University. New York, 1932. Pp. 6 + 165. Cloth $2.00.

This is the second Ph.D dissertation by an Arabic-speaking stu- dent to be issued by the Bureau of Publications of Teachers College in the last few years. The first was Totahi's Contribution of the Arabs to Education reviewed in this Journal, vol. 47 (1927), pp. 282-4. The world-renowned Persian poet is hardly ever thought of as a mathematician but the introduction of Dr. Kasir reveals him as a distinguished leader in that discipline which the Arabs bequeathed to the West together with its name. Kasir's translation is based on an Arabic manuscript in the library of one of his teachers, Pro- fessor David Eugene Smith, and for the first time makes accessible to English readers one of the treasures of Arabic mathematical lore. The book is provided with a good bibliography but unfortu- nately follows the German system of transliteration.

Princeton University. PHILIP K. HITTI.

The Domestication of the Cormorant in China and Japan. By BFRTHOLD LAUFER. Field Museum of Natural History pub- lication no. 300: Anthropological series, volume XVIII, no. 3. Chicago: FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, 1931. Pp. 201-262; 4 plates in photogravure.

In a work which is primarily a contribution to domestications in anthropology, the author has again achieved in parvo a model of methodology in sinological research. The very prevalence of the cormorant of which some forty species are known, a cosmopolitan scattered everywhere over the globe, at once provides a universality of interest. It is, however, in relation to its utilitarian purposes

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268 Reviews of Books

in Japan and China that this somewhat grotesque bird is insepar- able from our concepts of the Far East. To the many earlier references both in written text and graphic representation, fre- quently inaccurate and misleading, Dr. Laufer has now provided a hitherto lacking scientific study of characteristic clarity and precision.

Phalacrocorax carbo Schr. Swinhoe, is placed in its Far Eastern setting under the various categories of observation such as history, processes of domestication, iconography and folk-lore, etc. The theme of the investigation is that the Chinese are the only people who have brought it into a complete and perfect state of domestica- tion, the bird propagating and being bred in captivity. Its use for sport only, similar to that of the falcon, appears to have been intro- duced into Europe by those early adventurers to the Far East, the Hollanders, probably from Japan, where, as so early a record as the Sui Shu (compiled in the 7th century) gives it, the use of cormorants for fishing had been in practice.

Cormorant fishing, it is disclosed, is one of the contributions not made through China primitively to neighboring civilizations. The Japanese were aware of this use of the bird three centuries before any reliable note of it appears in Chinese records. The much disputed term wu kluei, "black devil ", appearing in one of Tu Fu's poems (8th century), the investigator's wide reading indi- cates, has erroneously been held to be the cormorant. In fine, written evidence is lacking up to the 10th century that the cor- morant, the lu tz ii, was employed for this purpose in China.

One may observe, however, that the scholastic mind of the Chi- nese literatus often disdained to record as trifling or beneath notice the commonest practices of the plebs, just as in the literature of the Romans important crafts and popular practices would be unknown were it not for the wall-paintings and mosaics surviving from the cities exhumed from volcanic dust. In fact, the Chinese and Japanese made little fuss over their discoveries, often unique phenomena in the history of the world. Dr. Laufer's discussion, however, is abundantly convincing from the stand-point of literary evidence that the practice appeared first in Japan, and that it did not pass from China through Korea, where it was never followed, as in the case of other cultural loans.

The Chinese and Japanese terminology of the cormorant is given

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Notes of the Society, Correction 269

exhaustive consideration, and the scope of the investigation presents an unusual insight into the rich bibliography of Chinese natural science scarcely suspected by the occidental student. As the author observes in his earlier study on Geophagy (Field Museum of Natural History, Pub. 280, p. 101), "the days are gone when the discussion of a problem started with the Greeks and Romans whose importance in the history of civilization is not much greater than, and in many respects inferior to, that of the Asiatic nations."

University of California. EssoN M. GALE.

NOTES OF THE SOCIETY

The Society has lost by death two of its elder members distinguished for their scholarly attainments: Dr. Edward Washburn Hopkins, professor emeritus of Sanskrit in Yale University, who died on July 16, 1932; and Rev. Dr. Justin E. Abbott, of Summit, N. J., formerly a missionary in India, who died on June 19, 1932.

By recent action of the Corporation of Yale University Professor John C. Archer has been appointed to the newly established Hoober Professor- ship of Comparative Religion.

The Executive Committee has elected the following persons as corporate members:

Mr. Hugh Borton Prof. George A. Odgers Prof. Edwin E. Calverly Rev. Prof. John Paterson Mrs. B. C. Merrill Prof. J. Frank Reed.

CORRECTION

In my article on "Transliteration of the Names of Chinese Buddhist Monks," in the JOURNAL, vol. 52, the following errors occurred:

p. 160, line 14, read ait for A4. p. 162, line 10, read I for U. p. 162, line 4 from bottom, read f for ;.

Harvard University. J. R. WAB.

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