44 Anthropology. [Jan., 
they have given origin. Hence those who have kept themselves at 
all on a level with these subjects will not find much that is new in 
the work before us, and we are somewhat at a loss to understand 
why these lectures, however well they may be adapted to place a 
German-speaking audience au cowrant with these problems, should 
have been selected by the Council of the Anthropological Society 
for translation and publication to their members ; for we should 
have supposed that the members of a society which professes “ to 
investigate the laws of man’s origin and progress,” would not have 
required to go to a foreign source for information on these topics, 
but would have made themselves acquainted with the writings of 
the most important at least of those men of science in this country 
who have communicated their speculations to the world, and with 
whom indeed it may be said that most of the recent theories and 
surmises on these subjects have originated. 
We should not, however, have pressed this objection to the 
translation of Vogt’s Lectures if, after perusal of the book, we had 
felt that the argument had been fairly stated, and that a spirit of 
candour and a desire to seek for the truth, even though it might at 
first sight seem to be opposed to the predilections of the author, 
had pervaded its pages. 
When the man of science enters on the physical investigation 
of a subject, which goes so far back in the history of the world as 
the first appearance of man upon earth, every step should be taken 
with the utmost caution, every seeming link in the chain of evi- 
dence should be weighed and tested with the greatest care; for 
though man’s advent may not date from the dawn of time, and 
though he may not be able to claim an antiquity comparable to 
that of the Hozoon canadense, yet the tendency of all recent 
inquiry is to throw him much farther back than was at one time 
supposed, and to make him a contemporary of animals long since 
extinct, so that man, as he first appears in written history, is, 
compared with man primeval, but as a creature of yesterday. 
Vogt is a most strenuous advocate for this extended antiquity 
of the human race, and he has given a very readable account of the 
various localities in which human bones, or objects apparently the 
work of human hands, have been met with under circumstances 
which manifestly pomt to a high antiquity. But in his desire to 
prove his argument, he has not exercised sufficient discrimination in 
the selection of his cases, and has accepted as evidence certain sup- 
posed proofs which have not stood the test of a rigid investigation. 
We may refer more especially, in support of our statement, to his 
account of the much talked of Moulin-Quignon jawbone, the authen- 
ticity of which he accepts without hesitation, although some of our 
most distinguished English paleontologists are unable to accept it as 
genuine. Again, he pronounces the Engis Cave skull, respecting 
