462 
NATURE 
ee ieee Lh ae en TO} Bi ee 
tabikods eee bs ma sa ee ee 
| Ocd, 2, 1873 
same time that they often, by an unconscious process 
of approval and persuasion, help to exaggerate bad 
qualities and develop worse. 
LVELL’S “ ANTIQUITY OF MAN” 
The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with 
an Outline of Glacial and Post Tertiary Geology, 
and Remarks on the Origin of Species, with special 
reference to Man’s First Appearance on the Earth. By 
Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., M.A., F.R.S. Fourth Edition 
Revised. Illustrated with Woodcuts. (London: John 
Murray, 1873.) 
INCE the first volume of “ The Principles of Geo- 
logy” appeared—now more than forty-three years 
ago—Sir Charles Lyell has put forth an uninterrupted 
series of new works or new editions, and we have 
now arrived at the 11th edition of the “ Principles,” the 
7th of the “Elements of Geology,” and the 4th of the 
“ Antiquity of Man.” A most striking feature of these 
works is, that they give the fullest and most accurate 
scientific details, and the most philosophical discussion of 
principles and results,.without for a single page ceasing 
to be interesting to any well educated and thoughtful 
man. Perhaps no author has attained in so perfect a 
degree the art of making science popular without ever 
attempting to popularise it, or has produced a series of 
works which are equally acceptable to the experienced 
geologist and to the general reader. 
The present edition of the well-known “ Antiquity of 
Man” will fully sustain the author’s high reputation, since 
it is not a mere corrected reprint of former editions, but, 
in several important respects, a new work, embodying all 
the most recent discoveries and researches on the various 
subjects of which it treats, while several discussions of 
temporary or personal interest have been omitted. Al- 
most every chapter contains either important new facts or 
new results derived from a more careful study of old 
ones; while some are almost wholly rewritten, as, for 
example, chap. xii., in which the most recent researches 
on the climate of the Crag period is very fully given ; and 
it would need a very acute critic to discover in these any 
lack of that lucidity of arrangement and vigour of 
thought which have always distinguished Sir Charles 
Lyell’s writings. 
The most striking additional facts bearing directly on 
the Antiquity of Man are so well known and have been 
so often before the public, that it is unnecessary to enume- 
rate them here ; but it may be advisable to remark briefly 
upon a theoretical point of some importance on which the 
author’s views seem open to question ; and there are also 
a few matters connected with the general subject which 
seem worthy of attention. 
Although Professor Gastaldi, of Turin, after a careful 
study of the Italian Alps, has adopted Professor Ramsay’s 
view of the excavation of alpine lake basins by ice, Sir 
Charles Lyell is still strongly opposed to that view. He 
maintains that they have been produced by changes of 
level in valleys, producing depressions which have been 
preserved during the glacial epoch by being filled with 
ice, while at all other times they were either soon filled by 
débris, or their lower barriers were cut down as fast as 
they were formed. He thus accounts for the fact that 
lakes only occur in any abundance in glaciated districts. 
-He further maintains that the erosive power of glaciers, as 
indicated bythe muddytorrent thatalways issuesfrom them 
has been overrated, because “the flour of rock” thus pro 
duced is due, not solely to the wearing down of the floor of 
the valley, but, “ toa considerable extent,” to the grinding 
up of the stones which fall upon'the glacier and are en- 
gulphed in its crevasses. 
There are doubtless many difficulties in Prof. Ramsay’s 
theory, and much remains to be done to verify it, but it 
does seem to cover a larger portion of the facts than 
that now opposed to it. There is no evidence before us 
to show how much of the glacier mud is respectively due 
to the two sources above referred to, but the enormous 
bulk of many of the old moraines, where they have 
not been destroyed by subsequent denudation, seems 
amply sufficient to account for the ¢éb77s which falls upon 
a glacier ; while the wide extent of glaciated surfaces, and 
the manner in which the very hardest upturned Strata are 
often planed off or #zonlonnées, is equally convincing proof 
that large masses of rock have been ground down by 
glaciers. The evidence of this is very remarkable also, 
in the case of the Loess, a deposit which covers an enor- 
mous extent of country, and in some parts of the valley 
of the Rhine reaches a thickness of near 1,000 feet, and 
which Sir Charles Lyell himself considers to be undoubt- 
edly glacial mud. It is difficult to conceive how such an 
enormous amount of mud could have been formed except 
by a grinding power capable of producing most of the 
effects imputed to it by Prof. Ramsay. It is considered 
to be one of the most powerful arguments against the 
ice-erosion theory that no lakes exist in certain valleys 
which were undoubtedly filled with enormous glaciers ; 
but the answer to this is, that a lake will only be produced 
when the erosion is considerably greater at one part of 
the valley than at another, and this inequality may be 
caused either by unequal hardness of the subjacent rocks 
or by the piling up of the ice to a greater thickness in 
certain spots by the convergence of several branch 
glaciers, as must have béen notably the case over the site 
of Lago Maggiore, which received the icy streams de- 
scending from near roo miles of the loftiest Alps. It 
must also be remembered, that at such points of con- 
vergnce the rate of motion of the glacier will be much 
more rapid than elsewhere, in order to discharge the accu- 
mulated ice-streams ; and we shall thus have a double 
cause of increased grinding in such positions. A 
difficulty of a somewhat similar nature, and which cannot 
be so easily overcome, besets the unequal-subsidence 
theory, which can hardly be made to account for the 
thousands and tens of thousands of lakes so thickly 
scattered over the lowlands of Northern Europe and 
America. 
It is somewhat remarkable that notwithstanding the 
numerous researches in post-tertiary caves and gravels in 
all parts of Europe, no human remains have been disco- 
vered which can be proved to be older than those found 
by Dr. Schmerling “more than forty years ago in the 
caverns near Liége. After many years’ labour this gentle- 
man, a skilful anatomist and paleontologist, published, in 
1833, a detailed account of his researches, copiously illus- - 
trated. It is curious to sec, from Sir Charles Lyell’s — 
account of this work, how completely its author antici- 
