May 27, 1880] 



NATURE 



excellent illustrations, the sources of which are given in 

 a table at the commencement of the work, a detail of 

 importance often omitted. 



The first chapter deals with the relation of geology to 

 archaeolog)' and history, these three sciences all contribut- 

 ing to the building up of the account of early man in 

 Britain. There appears to be a slip in the table showing 

 the specialisation of mammalia in the tertiarj- period, 



where the period is divided into the eocene, miocene, 

 pleiocene, pleistocene, prehistoric, and historic stages. 

 The latter stage is said to be characteriEed by living 

 species of mammalia and no extinct species, which is 

 rather misleading, since Steller's sea-cow is almost cer- 

 tainly extinct, and several other mammalia are verging on 

 extinction. 

 After an interesting sketch of the physical conditions 



and the successive faunas and floras of preceding geo- 

 logical periods in Britain, the account of the miocene age 

 is concluded with a paragraph headed " No Proof of Man 

 in Europe in the i\Iiocene Age. ' High authorities such 

 as Dr. Hamyand ^I. de ^iortillet have maintained that 

 man did exist in France as early as the middle of the 

 miocene age, basing their 'conclusions on the evidence 

 given by splinters of flint found in mid-miocene strata at 

 SS^^i; S Thenay by the Abbd Bourgeois, and 



by a notched fragment of a rib found 

 at Pouance by M. Delauny. The 

 author seems a little in doubt whether 

 these flakes and notches are in reality 

 artificial, but if they be so he prefers 

 to conclude, with Prof. Gaudry, that 

 they were made by the anthropomor- 

 phous apes then inhabiting France 

 rather than by man. This appears to 

 be a somewhat wild suggestion, and the 

 author is evidently led to it by con- 

 siderations which are set -forth in the 

 same paragraph, and which seem to 

 him to prove that from zoological 

 grounds man could not have existed in 

 the miocene age, as to the cogency of 

 which considerations we cannot at all 

 agree with him. His argument is that 

 because no other living species of land 

 mammal has been met with in the 

 miocene fauna, therefore man could 

 not have formed an exception to this 

 supposed rule, and " had no place in a 

 fauna which is conspicuous by the 

 absence of all the mammalia now 

 associated with him.'' " If miocene 

 man had existed it is incredible that 

 he alone of all the mammalia living 

 in these times in Europe should not 

 have perished or have changed into 

 some other form in the lapse of ages." 

 The author adds : " Those who believe 

 in the doctrine of evolution will see 

 the full force of this argument against 

 the presence of man in the miocene 

 fauna not merely of Europe but of the 

 whole world." Now we, we hope in com- 

 mon with all the readers of Nature, 

 are thorough-paced evolutionists, but 

 we should have said rather that those 

 who understand the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion would consider this argument as 

 completely unsound. Evolution, wher- 

 ever variedly manifested in its action, 

 does not produce any comprehensive 

 similar effect on any group of different 

 objects on which it acts. According 

 to the varying conditions partly sur- 

 rounding, partly embodied in each ob- 

 ject, evolution singles out certain of the 

 objects for higher specialisation, others 

 for degradation, others again for extinc- 

 tion ; whilst others again it, as it were, 

 leaves alone to survive unchanged 

 through ages amongst hosts of modified 

 . descendants of their near relatives. The 



survival of some form, larval or adult, 

 or of some organ of great antiquity in unchanged con- 

 dition, where all the concomitants have become profoundly 

 modified, is one of the most familiar facts explamed by 

 the evolution theory. How is it else that the brachiopod 

 Lingula has survived in nearly identical foiTn to the 

 present day from the earliest geological times, whilst 

 all its then contemporaries are extinct or have changed ? 

 How is it else that the vertebrate structure survives in 



