Rim of Christendom by Herbert Eugene BoltonReview by: M. F. Ashley-MontaguIsis, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jul., 1938), p. 116Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225936 .

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II6 ISIS, XXIX, I

Herbert Eugene Bolton.-Rim of Christendom. xv + 644 pp. New York: The MACMILLAN CO., I936, $ 5.00.

We live in an age of superlatives, of superlatively large bridges, of superlatively bad morals, of superlative compromise, of superlatively good and superlatively bad things, in fact we live in a period which may well come to be known to future generations as the Superlative Period. Perhaps one of the most satisfying compensations which the Superlative Period has to offer us who live in it is the variety and the number of excellent works which may be critically appreciated as superlatively good. The present volume falls into such a category. Professor BOLTON has put twenty-five years of loving and exhaustive labour into the collection of materials for the making of this definitive biography of the Pacific Coast pioneer and Jesuit missionary to the Indians EUSEBIO FRANCISCO

KINO (I645-I7II), leaving no place unvisited and no repository unexa- mined in his search for materials bearing upon his subject. The result is a very remarkable, a very informative, and a very readable story.

KINO was born in the hamlet of Segno in the Italian Tyrol on August IO, 1645; he came of a good stock not unpossessed of means. He attended school at Trent and later entered the Jesuit College at the same place "where he excelled at mathematics". A vow taken during a mortal illness led him to devote his life to the Society of Jesus and the Indian Mission, and following a long course of studies pursued at Freiburg, Ingolstadt, Innsbruck, Munchen, and Oettingen, KINO finally set foot in Mexico, following many mishaps and adventures, in i68i. The story of his pioneering explorations in California and Mexico from that time until his death in I7II, the manner in which he built his churches, and brought "civilization" to the heathen Indian is a record of triumph in the face of great odds. KINO was an excellent cartographer, as many of the maps which illustrate this volume well show. His Exposicon astrono- mica de el comrleta, published in Mexico City in I718, is scientifically an unimportant work, but it does serve for a momernt to bring him into the ranks of the astronomers. It is chiefly remarkable for the fact that it drew a rather amuising reply from Don SIGUENZA Y GONGORA, the noted Mexican scholar. But this was merely an incident in KINO'S life, a brief moment which has caused him to be brought into the pages of this jour- nal. For the rest, Professor BOLTON'S study should prove of great interest to historians of the processes of civilazition.

New York University. M. F. ASHLEY-MONTAcu.

Blaise Pascal. - i. The Physical Treatises of Pascal: The Equilibrium of Liquids and the Weight of the Mass of the Air. Translated by I. H. B. and A. G. H. SpiERs with introduction and notes by

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