he might or might not have been co-existent with the extinct animals of whose bones so many were found in the cave earth in which the skeleton was interred. But close by, in front of the cave there was, as has been suggested to me, irresistible evidence that man lived in those caves (there are four or five of them) at the same time that animals now extinct were living in the neighbourhood. For in front of the cave is a talus, formed of breccia fallen from the cliff above. The stones forming this breccia are as sharp and angular as when they fell from the cliff, and they are cemented by lime and iron into a hard conglomerate. In this conglomerate, whilst making the railway cutting two years ago, were found numerous implements of flint-knives, spear and arrow heads, and cores of flints, from which these had been broken off, also bones of animals now extinct, and bones of animals now existing. Now as the stones forming the conglomerate are so very sharp and angular, it seems to me to be very conclusive evidence that they are lying where they first fell, and that the bones and flints amongst them are also lying just where they were thrown by the inhabitants of the caves above."

The report of Dr. Rivière will no doubt lay all the facts before us, as to this and the other caves, to which attention had been drawn by M. W. De Suiram, in 1869, and also by Dr. Falconer, who, in 1858, after examining at Nice the brecciated mass of human bones discovered near St. Hospice, visited the Rocco Rosso caverns near Mentone, which had previously yielded such abundant relics of long-continued human occupation, upon the exploration of M. François Forel.

In connection with this subject Mr. John Evans, in his recent work on "Ancient Stone Implements," June, 1872, states that the difference in the faunas of the palæolithic and neolithic periods is of great importance, as affording some guide in judging of the antiquity of human remains when found in caverns without any characteristic weapons or implements; such, for instance, as the human skull cited by Mr. Boyd Dawkins as having been found in a cave at the head of Cheddar Pass, in Somersetshire. For it must never be forgotten that the occupation of caves by man is not confined to any definite period; and that even in the case of the discovery of objects of human workmanship in direct association with the remains of the Pleistocene extinct mammals, their contemporaneity cannot be proved without careful observation of the circumstances under which they occur, even if then. Another point may also be here mentioned, namely, that where there is evidence of the occupation of a cavern by man, and also by large carnivores, they can hardly have been tenants in common, but the one must have preceded the other, or possibly the occupation by each may have alternated more than once.

288

REVIEWS.

MAN'S ORIGIN.*

THERE HERE are some who would doubt the propriety of translating a work like the present one into the English tongue, and we almost fancy that the editor is to some extent of this class. But for ourselves we do not perceive its disadvantage. Indeed, on the other hand, we approve of the effort to introduce into our language so fearless and outspoken and honest a labour as that which Dr. Büchner has performed. In regard to the editor, we think he has been engaged in a task which must in every page have run hard against his conscience; and we wonder therefore that, if he did perform a task which must have so completely gone foul of his ideas, he did not conceal his name, and so have, to a certain extent, prevented the injurious influence-injurious at least to the author's views which must follow a preface in which he states that he "is by no means inclined to accept all the results at which Dr. Büchner has arrived." Indeed, it seems us that Mr. Dallas must have found almost all of Dr. Büchner's views unacceptable; for it certainly appears that the author's one distinct and clearly-drawn conclusion is, that there is no such thing as a Deity, and his other, that man's existence comes to an end as soon as his life is finished. However, we must thank Mr. Dallas for having given us an excellent and clear translation of a most interesting and forcibly-written book, in which the author puts forward his views as clearly as he did in his former work, " Force and Matter,” but without any of that offensive manner which created for his previous essay so many fierce opponents. Further gratitude is due to Mr. Dallas for not inserting a number of sharp, opposing foot-notes, showing what parts of the work he especially objected to. The book contains nothing that will be new to those who have followed minutely anthropological science for the past ten years, though it certainly contains, in a pithy and masterly style, nearly everything that has been achieved by the English and foreign savants in that space of time; but to the general reader, or to the dabbler in science, it offers a masterly summary of the facts, reflections, and ultimate conclusions that have been put forward in regard to man's origin during the period referred to. Indeed, in this respect we know of no volume that can be at all compared with it, not only for the facts it contains, but for the scholarly shape in which these facts have been put together and laid before

"Man in the Past, Present, and Future," from the German of Dr. L. Büchner. By W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. London: Asher & Co., 1872.

the reader. Of course, in such a work the notes and references must be manifold, and we think that the method of placing them at the end of the volume both tends to lend the pages a better shape and to make the notes more carefully studied by the reader who refers to them.

The author regrets that his book had almost gone through the press before Darwin's celebrated volumes on "The Descent of Man" had made their appearance; but he congratulates himself on the fact that he has arrived, without the great English naturalist's aid, at practically the same conclusions. Dr. Büchner, of course, traces man through the different tribes which gradually, step by step, lead down almost to the brute. He gives numerous quotations from travellers of repute, showing the low mental, moral, and physical condition of these savages, and then he points out how, even in their anatomy, they approach the apes. Then he gives the numerous instances which have, during the past ten years, been brought forward regarding pre-historic man, and he shows conclusively that in many of the examples the skeleton-especially the skull-possessed, in a marked degree, characters that are now not exhibited by any living creature, save certain of the quadrumana. In all his observations on this point of course it is impossible to go against him. We mean, that for any man at all conversant with anatomy, such a line of reasoning as would be opposed to Herr Büchner would be in the highest degree absurd. Here you have man possessing the same skeletal formation, or nearly so; the same heart, lungs, thyroid, diaphragm, liver, stomach, and intestines; same kidneys, same spleen, same pancreas, same organs of reproduction, nearly the same hands, and a closer allied brain than that possessed by any other mammal. And notwithstanding all these important details of anatomy you are asked to believe that man was made from clay-though he hardly contains a particle of its most universal constituent, alumina. Assuredly, all reasonable men will go in with Dr. Büchner, and will believe that man must have come from the apes, a doctrine which has so much to support it, rather than the other view, which is merely a questionable hypothesis of the almost untranslatable Holy Writ, and which, besides having nothing to support it, is opposed on the most important chemical grounds to which we have alluded.

There is only one instance in which it seems to us that the author is incorrect, and that is a case that may fairly be forgiven him, for the best authorities in France are of the same opinion. It is in reference to the Moulin-Quignon jaw-bone, which he in common with the Frenchmen pronounces to have been a fossil. We cannot regard the bone as in the least degree antique. It seems to us unquestionable that it was a bone of recent formation, which was imposed upon the French savants who obtained it. In our opinion Mr. Busk's method of examination was the only correct one. He sawed the bone through, and obtained the same peculiar smell which is so well known to those who manipulate recent bones. It is utterly out of the question that this peculiar smell could have been obtained from any but a recent bone, and therefore we regard the Moulin-Quignon jaw-bone as representing a scientific canard. However, there are other specimens whose antiquity is beyond question, and of them Herr Dr. Büchner gives a

good and clear account. Let us take the Neanderthal skull and La Naulette jaw as examples:

:

"The most important of these remains is the celebrated Neanderthal skull already mentioned * which Huxley describes as the most ape-like of all the human skulls that he has ever seen, and of which he says that in its examination we meet with ape-like characters in all parts, and also that it has the greatest similarity with the existing Australian skulls, and with the ancient Borreby skulls. Huxley also states that this skull is by no means an isolated phenomenon, but that it is only the extreme term of a long series of bestial, or, at least, very lowly-developed human skulls of the past and present periods." Again, on the same subject, the author writes: "in the year 1866 a fragment of a human jaw with very remarkable and animal characters was found by the indefatigable Belgian cave-explorer, Dr. Edward Dupont, in the Trou de la Naulette, a lone cave situated on the bank of the little river Lesse, not far from the village of Chaleux. It was in a deposit of river-loam, covered with a layer of stalagmite, and at a depth of about four metres. The most remarkable of its characters, besides the comparative thickness and rounded form of the bone, and its elliptical dental curve, is the almost entire absence of the chin. The projecting or prominent chin is so distinctive a character of man that Linné, the great lawgiver of systematic zoology, could name no better bodily distinctions between man and animals, than the upright position and prominent chin of the former. In animals, instead of projecting the chin retreats, and the jaw of La Naulette holds an intermediate position between the two; where the projection of the chin ought to be, it exhibits a line descending perpendicularly. Moreover the cavities destined for the reception of the canine teeth are remarkably wide and large as in animals, although the canines themselves are closely contiguous to the incisors, and not molars, and the jaw is thus shewn to be undoubtedly of human origin. But what is still more remarkable than this is the circumstance that the three hinder or persistent molars present exactly the same relative sizes as is usual in the anthro-promorphous apes. Thus whilst in the higher races of man, the three true molars are so arranged that the first is the largest and the last or hindermost the smallest, we find in the dentition of the lower races, such as the Malays and Negroes, that all the three molars are of equal size, and throughout larger than usual. But in the anthropoid apes the first true molar is the smallest, and the last the largest, and this is the case also in this fossil human jaw, the last or hindermost molar of which even appears to have possessed five roots. To all this may be added that the inner surface of the jaw at the point of the so-called suture or symphisis, behind the incisor teeth, forms a line obliquely directed upwards, and consequently leaves no doubt as to the prognathism of its former possessor."

We fancy that the above quotation will suffice to show that the author has not dealt in a slovenly fashion with his book, but has been at care in dealing with points of evidence; he gives them fully, minutely, and thoroughly. The other portions of the book are alike, and they all bear the author along to the conclusion regarding man, which he expresses in his last chapter. We must now leave the work in our readers' hands, begging of them to read it carefully, and not either from enthusiasm or from malice to do this author's efforts any injustice.

THE FALLACIES OF DARWINISM.*

THE opponents of Darwinism are numerous enough, but we may add by no means intelligent enough to do anything but help to extend Mr. Darwin's views by bringing very feeble arguments against Darwinian views before people who are ignorant of the whole subject, but who are intelligent enough to perceive fallacies when put before them, and who, once they are called upon to consider whether man has descended from the other animals or has been separately and similarly made, very naturally conclude that the former is by far the most probable of the two. There is another quality, too, which the opponents of Darwinism possess, and which certainly by no means tends to render their arguments more convincing, and that is the faculty of abuse. In every chapter of their works there is a summing up in which they express their astonishment at the very existence of unbelievers, and that too in terms usually of the very coarsest abuse that can be conceived. How unlike the whole number of Mr. Darwin's or Mr. Wallace's books. In no single passage do they attempt to revile-as indeed they might most easily the abortive and often absurd arguments of their opponents. Dr. Bree's is a book of the ordinary class, an abusive review of Mr. Darwin's theory, as unlike Mr. Mivart's able essay as anything possible to conceive, and by no means to be placed alongside it or compared with it in any respect. Yet the author has not been without some reading on the point. He has found out the names of two or three naturalists of repute who do not hold the Darwinian doctrines, but he is by no means to be considered as having Professor Owen on his side, though he evidently considers that the distinguished naturalist leans towards his views. We may not call Professor Owen a Darwinian, but if we could take Mr. Darwin's name from the doctrine, we doubt not Professor Owen would hold to it, for indeed he alleges that he put forward similar views quite thirty years since. Of the other names which Dr. Bree has got, we fail to see any of special importance in a zoological respect except Agassiz, though of course we could ourselves name some few more whom possibly Dr. Bree has never heard of. But if Dr. Bree were to ask to us to name those eminent masters of zoological science, which, at first opponents of Darwinism, have since become its firm supporters, he would doubtless be a little astonished at the multitude of European and American names we could put before him. The book is simply a series of bitter attacks on the views of Mr. Darwin, Professor Huxley, and the leading evolutionists of this country and the Continent. Of course there is some reason given for not holding particular theories arising out of the main doctrine, but these are indeed few, and not particular; while the arguments of the author are of the old-womanish kind, and invariably end with allusion to the Creator, and an assertion that therefore the doctrine in question must be absurd, because it is out of harmony with the author's particular religious belief. Let us take a paragraph from the chapter in which the author exhibits his knowledge of Van Baer's work. Here, after denying Mivart's view, he says:

"An Exposition of Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr. Darwin." By C. R. Bree, M.D., F.L.S. London: Longmans, 1872.