472 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



prodigal who spends all in riotous living is to be 

 coddled, pampered, and sympathized witb. The 

 wretch who yields to the basest passions is to 

 be put on a level with the man or woman who, 

 through many a weary year of good conduct and 

 pinching thrift, has supported a good name and 

 cherished a conscience void of offense. Is this 

 practice of confounding right and wrong consist- 

 ent with common-sense or expediency ? Is it fair, 

 and likely to be beneficial ? To one who remem- 

 bers the severities of the criminal law sixty years 

 since, the present penalties, bounding to an op- 

 posite extreme, seem little better than a farce. 

 Philanthropy has turned the moral world upside 

 down. A monster of iniquity knocks down, 

 kicks, and tramples on his wife, till she has hard- 

 ly the breath of life left in her, and it has been 

 the practice to let him off with a month's impris- 

 onment — that is to say, to be indulged with ex- 

 cellent board and lodging for a month as the 



appropriate punishment for his heinous offense ! 

 But the indignity ? The scoundrel who behaves 

 so has no sense of indignity. He is only alive to 

 physical suffering, and from that the law, as it 

 now stands, strangely exempts him. His sin 

 meets with no adequate retribution. The decrees 

 of Providence are reversed. 



Such are some of the conspicuous results of 

 inconsiderate benevolence. With the best inten- 

 tions, a wrong is done to society. We could wish 

 it to be otherwise. Relief and sympathy are of 

 course due to sufferers by misfortunes over which 

 they have had no control ; and it would be com- 

 ing back to something like primary injunctions 

 to succor these to the best of our ability. Chari- 

 ty of this kind will ever command a blessing. It 

 is only the abuse of charity, as developed in 

 great trading associations, to the extent of break- 

 ing down self-reliance and encouraging profliga- 

 cy, that merits general reprobation. 



— Chambers's Journal. 



A EEVIEW OF "THE EPOCH OF THE MAMMOTH." 



By W. BOYD DAWKINS. 



BOOKS may be divided into three classes 

 from the point of view offered by criticism, 

 and apart from all considerations of style. There 

 are carefully-written books, the natural fruit of 

 much thought and labor by men who have special 

 knowledge of their subject, and who spare no 

 pains to avoid using faulty materials which after- 

 ward may have to be removed, as is generally the 

 case, with much trouble and annoyance. The 

 second class consists of books written without 

 care and very generally the outcome of ignorance 

 or vanity, full of errors, and worse than useless ; 

 and, lastly, there are some books containing much 

 useful information, but so grouped around views 

 which are utterly wrong that they are worthless 

 for any purpose in which exact knowledge is re- 

 quired. In this class very generally the true is 

 so mingled with the false that it requires the eye 

 of an expert to tell the one from the other. With 

 the first and second of these classes it is easy for 

 a reviewer to deal. It is his duty to welcome 

 the first, not without pointing out (if he can, and 

 we know from experience that very frequently he 



1 " The Eporh of the Mammoth." By G. James C. 

 Southwell, A. M., LL. D. 8vo. (London : Triibner 

 & Co., 1678.) 



cannot) the mistakes inseparable from all books, 

 just as he is bound to rebuke sternly the second, 

 and to warn the reader that he is on dangerous 

 ground. It is, however, hard to do justice to the 

 third ; for, while the information may be useful 

 per se, in its position in the book it may be mis- 

 chievous because it is worked into a wrong hy- 

 pothesis, thus fulfilling Lord Palmerston's defini- 

 tion of dirt as " matter in the wrong place." 



The work before us falls into the third class. 

 Its author seems to have skimmed most of the 

 current literature of the day, more especially re- 

 views, and, out of the vast array of facts at his 

 command, has picked out those suitable to his 

 views on the recent origin of man. Many of his 

 facts are true, but they are so grouped as to lead 

 the reader to a wrong conclusion. Many of his 

 asserted facts are untrue. The work is a sequel 

 to "The Recent Origin of Man," reviewed in this 

 journal, and is to a large extent an answer to the 

 criticism which it then provoked. We regret 

 that the author has not profited by his experi- 

 ence, and that he should have expended so much 

 trouble in attempting to prove a negative which 

 in the nature of things cannot be proved. 



The author's aim is to show that man has not 



