190 Book Notices. 



which the shell has been replaced by iron pyrites, it ha? a glistening 

 appearance like that of a snake's skin. As such fossils are sometimes 

 called "snake-stones," and are in Ireland supposed to be the serpents 

 St. Patrick banished, we can not wonder if the uncritical savage, class- 

 ing this object with those it most resembles, thinks it a transmuted 

 snake — once flesh and now stone. In another place, where a gully 

 has been cut through sandstone by a stream, he observes on the sur- 

 face of a slab the outline of a fish, and, looking closely, sees scales 

 and the traces of fins ; and elsewhere, similarly imbedded in rock, he 

 finds skulls and bones not unlike those of the animals he kills for 

 food; some of them, indeed, not unlike those of men. 



"Still more striking are the transmutations of plants occasionally 

 discovered. I do not refer so much to the prints of leaves in shale, 

 and the fossil stems found in strata aiccompanying coal ; I refer, more 

 especially, to the silicified trees here and there met with. Retaining 

 not their general forms only, but their minute structures, so that the 

 annual growths are marked by rings of color such as mark them in 

 living stems, these yield the savage clear evidence of transmutation. 

 With all our knowledge, it remains difficult to understand how silica 

 can so replace the components of the wood as to preserve the appear- 

 ance thus perfectly ; and for the primitive man, knowing nothing of 

 molecular action, and unable to conceive a process of substitution, 

 there is no possible thought but that the wood is changed into stone." 



These, and kindred phenomena, such as development from the egg, 

 shadows, echoes, etc., it is argued, lead the uncultured mind to belief 

 in a dual existence, which is formulated in the superstitions of all 

 savage tribes, and may thus be referred to as general and inevitable 

 process of mental evolution. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America. By Hubert Howe 

 Bancroft. Vol. 1., Wild Tribes. Price, $5 50. D. Appleton k Co., New York. 



Those interested in the ethnology of the American aborigines will 

 receive with pleasure the announcement of a series of five volumes, 

 presenting, in a condensed and accurate form, the gleanings of a library 

 of 16,000 books, pamphlets and manuscripts, collected by Mr. Ban- 

 croft, with especial reference to the task whose first fruits are noW 

 before us. 



