Obser ver. Miss Harrison is an indefatigable worker, and her volume is a monument of laborious and wary investigation. Her essay on Athenian local cults is perhaps her most valuable contribution to the general science of mythology. It is the first serious attempt, at least in England, to make the vase paintings, of which such superb collections exist in Paris, London, Berlin, and elsewhere, yield up their secret as to the origin and meaning of the forms and symbols, to which, in their later elaboration, appropriate, but often quite artificial, legends have been attached.