LITERARY NOTICES. 



245 



Schellen and Roscoe, Mr. Lockyer has adopt- 

 ed an intermediate and independent course, 

 and made an instructive volume of moderate 

 size on questions at present most interest- 

 ing in the theory and practice of spectro- 

 scopy. Treating but briefly of the con- 

 struction of the spectroscope, which is so 

 fully dealt with in the current works, he 

 gives more attention to its uses and results 

 in connection with problems that are now 

 undergoing investigation. Chapter I. con- 

 tains an excellent statement of the laws of 

 wave-phenomena, that are at the foundation 

 of the theory of spectrum analysis ; and, as 

 an example of the style and illustration of 

 the book, as well as the interest of the ex- 

 position, we reproduce a portion of it in the 

 present number of the Monthly. Chapter 

 IV., treating of atoms and molecules, pre- 

 sents admirably the views at present held 

 by chemists and physicists respecting the 

 molecular constitution of matter in its rela- 

 tions to spectral phenomena. But the vol- 

 ume of Studies is mainly devoted to topics 

 that concern amateurs and experimenters in 

 the laboratory or the observatory. Besides 

 the numerous woodcuts and the colored 

 map of radiation and absorption spectra, 

 Mr. Lockyer has introduced a series of pho- 

 tographic plates showing actual effects more 

 accurately than would be possible with en- 

 gravings ; and this feature somewhat en- 

 hances the cost of the book. 



The Epoch of the Mammoth, and the Ap- 

 parition of Man upon the Earth. By 

 James C. Southall, A. M., LL. D. With 

 Illustrations. Philadelphia: J. B. Lip- 

 pincott & Co. Pp. 430. 



We cannot deal with this book better 

 than to give here a portion of the able ar- 

 ticle devoted to it in the Saturday Review : 



"The advance of prehistoric archaeology, the 

 latest of the sciences, is not altogether as yet 

 the continuous onward flow which enthusiasts 

 in the study would have it to be. It is more 

 like that of a tidal river periods of reaction 

 or reflux alternating with the general progres- 

 sive set of the current onward. Bound up as it 

 is with the theory of evolution as represented 

 in the main by the views of Mr. Darwin, there 

 is no wonder that the new study is met at times 

 by a certain ebb in popular favor, or even in the 

 acceptance of serious inquirers. None need 

 complain, however, if the ground has to be thus 

 gone over again with increased care and in a 

 more critical spirit, so that the result be to con- 

 solidate more thoroughly what has been really 



gained from the study of the evidences, as well 

 as to put a wholesome check upon tendencies 

 which threaten a dangerous expansion of theory 

 beyond the limits of fact. In this way much 

 good may be done by attempts like that of Mr. 

 Southall, in his 'Epoch of the Mammoth,' to 

 bring to a focus the scattered rays of light 

 which the most recent inquiries have shed upon 

 the chronology of human life, tracing the his- 

 tory of man to the period of its dawn, and seek- 

 ing to assign to its beginning something like 

 a definite term of years. In the work recently 

 published he urges once more, with the aid of 

 fresh arguments and additional evidences, the 

 views previously advanced in his ' Recent Ori- 

 gin of Man. 1 There can be no inquiry more im- 

 portant to the interests of science, if not to in- 

 terests still wider and more sacred, or which 

 more requires to be treated in an open, calm, 

 and candid spirit. Unhappily it is not altogether 

 in such a spirit that we find it approached by 

 Mr. Southall, who soon makes it apparent that 

 his object is to enforce a foregone conclusion 

 rather than to conduct a critical and unbiased 

 inquiry. He holds as it were a brief against a 

 certain school of opinion, iustead of taking his 

 seat upon the bench of scientific judgment. In 

 his opening chapters he hastens to lay down the 

 conclusion to which he is desirous of leading 

 the reader, and the issue on which he is pre- 

 pared to 6take his cause. If he can but succeed 

 in bringing down the date of man's orisin im- 

 mensely within the limits assigned to it by geol- 

 ogists and paleontologists in general, there will 

 be no room left for any gradual and slow devel- 

 opment of humanity from a low and savage 

 state, still less for man's emerging from rela- 

 tionship with even lower animal forms. The 

 result will be a verdict for what was till lately 

 the received or orthodox belief, that man ap- 

 peared abruptly upon earth in the plenitude of 

 his powers, stature, and organization, at a defi- 

 nite moment of time not many thousand years 

 ago. 



"Undismayed by the long array of distin- 

 guished names which he acknowledges to be 

 opposed to his view of man's comparatively re- 

 cent origin, Mr. Southall boldly proclaims the 

 theory of evolution a failure. As for the exist- 

 ence of man during the Miocene or Pliocene 

 age, he may safely speak of the evidences as 

 speculative at the best, no remains of man or of 

 his works having been actually produced from 

 strata of that period. It is with quaternary man 

 at the furthest that he feels called upon to deal. 

 And he seeks to bring down the proofs of man's 

 existence within limits narrow indeed, com- 

 pared with the million years inferred by Mr. 

 Wallace, Prof. James Geikie, and Mr. Vivian, 

 from the stalagmitic deposits of the Devonshire 

 and other caves, with the 800,000 years original- 

 ly assigned by Sir C. Lyell, or with the 200,000 

 to which that eminent geologist was latterly in- 

 clined to reduce his figures, and at which Mr. 

 Croll arrives from elaborate calculations of the 

 successive glacial periods. We fail, however, 

 to see him grapple so directly or tenaciously as 

 we could have wished with the evidences of 



