SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 271 



kitchen middens, and long barrows. In these ancient dwelling places the 

 weapons, utensils, ornaments, burial and hearth stones testify unerringly 

 as to his mode of life. The degree of skill attained in his handiwork serves 

 as a basis to differentiate the earlier races from those of later times. Men 

 of the older stone age fashioned their weapons and tools in the rudest man- 

 ner from rocks, merely chipping the edges. In the succeeding period, the 

 neolithic, they had learned how to finish them by grinding; while in the 

 bronze and iron ages they discovered the use of metals. It is somewhat 

 remarkable that while it is a disputed point as to whether paleolithic man 

 possessed a bow, it should be a well-attested fact that his wife used bone 

 needles and knew how to sew. 



These authentic sources of knowledge concerning our early ancestors 

 are not the only data to be studied. Primitive races exist whose habits 

 indicate what prehistoric man may have been like, and the author pleads, 

 *' It is sincerely to be hoped they will not be improved off the face of the 

 earth before we have learned all that they can teach us about the past." 



Nothing definite is known concerning the place of man's first appear- 

 ance on the earth, but probably the northern hemisphere of the Old World 

 can claim the honor. This may have occurred fifteen or twenty thousand 

 years ago, but the allowance of eighty thousand odd years is deemed an. 

 unwarrantable waste of time. The volume contains ten full-page illustra- 

 tions based upon such details as the researches have furnished. Primeval 

 man, however, is reconstructed without a skull as a model for his features. 

 This feat must have tested the creative power of the artist, but we are as- 

 sured that even this has been done acceptably to the archaeologists, and we 

 can not demur if it does not coincide with our ideal. 



About one fifth of Macleod' s History of Economics is really history.* 

 The rest is exposition of basal principles. Macleod declares that economics 

 should and can be as exact as physical science, and he is putting forth vig- 

 orous efforts toward making it so. He says that most of the modern econ- 

 omists' work up to this time has been destructive, but that constructive 

 labors are now urgently demanded and that the ground has been fully 

 cleared for them. His present work opens with an essay on the method of 

 investigation proper to economics. He gives much credit to Bacon for 

 enunciating the principle that physical inductive science must precede and 

 guide moral inductive science and protests against Mill's declaration that 

 induction should not be taken as the method of political economy. Hav- 

 ing placed economics among the inductive sciences, our author proceeds to 

 lay down some general principles of reasoning which this position makes 

 fitting for it. " The fundamental concepts and axioms of every science," 

 he says, *' must be perfectly general," and " no general concept and no gen- 

 eral axiom must contain any term involving more than one fundamental 

 idea." The clarifying of fundamental concepts, in fact, is the chief object 

 of this treatise. The historical portion comes next. He rejects the insular 

 idea that political economy began with Adam Smith, and gives to the 

 French Economists the credit for establishing it as a science, although cer- 

 tain of its principles had been fixed from time to time before them. He 

 states the doctrines of the Economists regarding exchanges, money, wealth, 



* The History of Economics. By Henry Dunning Macleod. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

 Pp. 690, 8vo. Price, $4.50 net. 



