5° 



SOME NEW BOOKS. 



Our Forgotten Forefathers. 



Prehistoric Man and Beast. By Rev. H. N. Hutchinson. 8vo. Pp. xxii., and 

 298, with 10 plates. London : Smith, Elder, & Co., 1896. Price los. 6d. 



This is a fairly good attempt to collect and summarize what has been 

 published in books and memoirs (for the most part English) about 

 Prehistoric Man, with illustrations of his probable ways of life, taken 

 from the nature and customs of existing savages. It is comprehensive 

 and plainly expressed ; indeed, the author, intending to write in a 

 popular style, condescends to use a slang word here and there. 



The gradual outcome of creatures and things, not only the 

 manifold inhabitants of the earth from earliest times to the present, 

 but the structure and conditions of our globe, and the solar system 

 itself, is one of the leading ideas throughout this well-wrought 

 compilation of facts and notions about " Prehistoric Man and Beast." 



Part I. comprises seven chapters treating of "The Man of the 

 Older Stone Age " (Palaeolithic). The stone implements are briefly 

 described at page 28, and do not appear to have been specially 

 studied by the author. He notes some of the geological deposits, 

 chiefly in valleys and caves, in which these stone tools and weapons 

 have been found. The " Plateau Implements " of Kent, and the 

 gravel in which they lie, are better known now than when page 24 

 was written ; and their value is not really influenced by the 

 depreciative doubts of some referred to. The prehistoric human 

 remains are carefully noticed, especially those found in Belgium. 



The author expresses a strong distrust in the published evidence 

 of Pliocene or Miocene Man. He might as well have been cautious 

 in this matter. Dr. Noetling particularly refers the Burmese flint 

 flakes (see Natural Science, vol. v., p. 345) to a ferruginous 

 conglomerate of early Pliocene Age, and he writes that he did find 

 them in the real conglomerate, notwithstanding what the author's 

 "Old Schoolfellow" may state to the contrary. Dr. Hugh (why 

 "^Keith " ?) Falconer's expectation that man or his works will be found 

 in the Sivalik strata, or their equivalents, may still be well grounded. 



Mr. W. G. Smith's interesting book on " Man the Primeval 

 Savage," his implements and ways of life, is largely drawn upon ; and 

 like that laudable attempt to describe and illustrate prehistoric man 

 and his surroundings, the book before us is calculated to raise and 

 encourage a taste for this subject, putting the enquirer in the right 

 line of research, and affording many clues to first-class systematic 

 works on anthropology. 



The rock-shelters and caves of Dordogne and neighbouring 

 districts in France form the subject of chapter iii., taken from 

 good sources. Their former occupants are known as " Reindeer 

 Hunters." Some interesting notes taken by travellers and others 

 about existing savages and their modes of living and thinking are 

 brought in as appropriate to the probable condition of these 



