144 
NATURE 
[Dec. 22, 1870 

than the strong points. Among the latter, the first chap- 
ter, which’treats of the employment of stone implements 
in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, and gives the 
history of “thunderbolts,” is perhaps that which especially 
demands the notice of the Engtish reader. 
The evidence adduced by M. Bourgeois of the discovery 
of flint flakes and scrapers in the Miocene strata of | 
Thenay, along with remains of the hornless rhinoceros | 
| a priort, be inferred that the reindeer was one of the 
and mastodon, proves, according to M. Hamy, that man 
was an inhabitant of Miocene Europe. It is, however, 
rejected by most of the French and English savazts, be- 
cause M. Bourgeois has not shown that the implements in 
question may not have been derived ultimately from the 
surface of the ground, where they are very abundant. While 
M. Hamy acknowledges this to be the case, he does not 
see its full bearing on the value of the testimony. The 
implements probably are of Quaternary, or even of post- 
quaternary age, and certainly cannot be considered {de- 
cisive ofthe sojourn of man in Europe during the Miocene 
epoch, although the climate at the time was almost tropi- 
cal, and the conditions of life easy. Nor can the evidence 
of the grooved bones of Halithere, found by M. Delaunay 
at Puancé in Maine-et-Loire be accepted, because it 
cannot be proved that the grooves may not have been 
caused by some other agency than that of man. The 
proof of the existence of man in Europe during the Plio- 
cene epoch derived from the striz in the fossil bones 
found at Saint Prest and in the valley of the Arno, 
accepted by M. Hamy, is equally unsatisfactory. The 
flint “ arrow-head” (fig. 25) and other rude fragments said 
to have been obtained at the former place from the same 
horizon as the bones of Lvephas meridionalis, by M. Bour- 
geois, the stout champion of Miocene man, do not afford 
the precise and exact testimony which is demanded for 
the establishment of the case. The presence, indeed, of 
man in Europe in the Miocene and Pliocene epoch is as 
yet non-proven, and we must be content to await future dis- 
coveries. The results of the labours of archaeologists and 
geologists throughout Europe during the last ten years 
has not placed the advent of man further back than the 
river gravels of the Somme, and the epoch of the caves, | 
both of which are post-glacial or post-pliocene, or quater- 
nary, in other words posterior to the great submergence and 
refrigeration of northern Europe, through which many of 
the Pliocene mammalia were destroyed. 
M. Hamy has done good service to the students of 
the Quaternary epoch by refusing to allow the validity 
of M. Lartet’s divisions into the age of extinct animals, | 
as distinguished from that “of those which have 
migrated.” The intimate association of the remains 
of the two groups in the caves and in the river- 
deposits, renders such a division untenable. He also 
modifies the divisions of the Quaternary invented by M. 
Lartet—(1) the age of the cave-bear, (2) that of the 
mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, (3) that of the rein- 
deer, and (4) that of the aurochs, by running the first 
and the last two into two groups, connected together 
by a series of transitions. In other words, in the applica- 
tion of M. Lartet’s system, he finds it necessary to admit 
that the “ages” are more or less connected together, and 
have no very great value in classification. M. Lartet 
was undoubtedly correct in the view that the post- 
glacial or Quaternary mammals did not arrive in Europe 

en masse, but he has not shown us the order of their 
appearance, which is the very corner-stone of his system. 
So far as the geological evidence goes, the aurochs was 
probably living in the Val d’Arno in the Pliocene age, and 
the reindeer is found as abundantly in France, Germany, 
and Britain with the cave-bear as with the mammoth and 
woolly rhinoceros. Since, indeed, the Quaternary epoch 
succeeded the great lowering of temperature, it might, 
first animals to invade the then almost arctic regions 
of Central and Northern Europe. ‘The caves, how- 
ever, and the river-deposits, reveal nothing on this 
point; they merely prove beyond a doubt that all the 
Quaternary mammals were living here at the same time. 
It is very hard to understand why M. Lartet should have 
expected to find all the species of animals in one locality, 
and should have based his classification on the absence 
of some, and the presence of others, since in every 
living fauna the animals are unequally distributed. Nor is 
there any intelligible cause why some few animals should 
be picked out of a large fauna to the prejudice of the 
rest, for classificatory purposes. The Essay on the Post- 
glacial Mammals of-Great Britain (Quart. Geol. Journ. 
1869) demonstrated that the system will not apply to the 
British Fossil Mammalia, aad M. Hamy’s book implies 
that it is equally inapplicable to those of France, for which 
it was intended. It is not too much to say that our present 
knowledge forbids any attempt to subdivide the Quaternary 
epoch by an appeal to the animals living at the time. 
Archzologists may perhaps be able to classify the different 
forms of implements, but naturalists are as yet unable to 
learn the orderin which Quaternary mammalia invaded 
Europe. The reindeer is quite as likely to have pre- 
ceded as to have succeeded the mammoth. 
W. Boyp DAWKINS 

COOKE’S CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY 
lirst Principles of Chemical Philosophy. By Josiah 
P. Cooke, Jun., Erving Professor of Chemistry and 
Mineralogy in Harvard College. Pp. 533. (Macmillan 
and Co., London and Cambridge, 1870.) 
HIS book is intended to be used by students who have 
attended lectures on experimental chemistry, or 
after a course of laboratory instruction ; hence it deals 
merely with the theoretical principles of the science and 
their application for the solution of many practical prob- 
lems of chemical research. 
Every chapter and section is followed by a series of 
problems and questions which the student is recom- 
mended carefully to work out, and anyone who has 
mastered all the problems set forth will have attained a 
very considerable proficiency in chemical science. 
In the introductory chapter we have definitions referring 
to volume and weight, and the author has adopted here, 
as in several other instances, different kinds of type in 
order to represent different relations. Thus, Sp. Gr. in 
italics means specific gravity referred to water as unity ; 
the same symbol in ordinary Roman letters signifies that 
hydrogen is taken as the standard ; and when printed in 
Old English type that air=1. The distinctions between 
chemical and physical forces are here pointed out. 
oe aa 
