September 30, 1922] 



NA TURE 



443 



taken up. This is due to the small number of men 

 who have the necessary capital, skill, and energy to 

 engage in the more intensive type of cultivation 

 necessary on irrigated land. 



In certain matters of technique, such as improvements 

 in cultivation and rotations, the application of manures 

 and the use of better seed, considerable advances have 

 been effected. This is largely due to the investigations 

 made at the experimental farms of the Agricultural 

 Service. 



In one of the appendices to the book the author 

 outlines a draft bill to enable landowners to correct 

 the excessive division of holdings, and he supports 

 his case by full details of typical instances of sub- 

 division, and by comparison with the remedial measures 

 taken in other countries where the same conditions 

 have arisen. 



The book is essentially a plea for a specified course 

 of legislative action, and therefore may be to some 

 extent controversial, especially at the present time ; 

 but the facts are put forward in an eminently fair 

 manner, and the author's treatment and discussion 

 of them constitute an exceedingly interesting and 

 useful account of agricultural conditions in an important 

 region of India. B. A. Keen. 



Prehistory for the Schoolroom. 



(1) Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age. Written and 

 illustrated by M. and C. H. B. Quennell. (The 

 Everyday Life Series, I.) Pp. x+109. (London: 

 B. T. Batsford, Ltd., n.d.) 55. net. 



(2) The World -Story of 3,000,000,000 (?) Years. By 

 J. Reeves. Pp. 16. (London : P. S. King and Son, 

 Ltd., 1922.) 2S. (mI. net. 



(1) r ~V~ ""HIS is a delightful book. It ought to be in 

 A every schoolroom : but the elders will want 

 to borrow ii and enjoy it in the evenings. The line 

 drawings are masterpieces of well directed imagination. 

 That on p. 48 shows a Mousterian family between the 

 thin stems of the woodland and their cave ; the big 

 brother, just for fun, is frightening a little girl, who 

 clings to her mother's back as she looks after the fire ; 

 an elder sister, sitting near him, checks him by a timely 

 touch from her leg — her foot is just as ready as her 

 hand. The 130 square cm. of the drawing — the authors 

 justly use the metric scale — are full of life and incident ; 

 we should like to see the curtain rising on its realisation 

 as the first scene of a folk-drama. 



The clever guesses at the appearance in profile of 

 successive types of man, from Pithecanthropus to the 

 Magdalenian, should be supplemented by a few draw- 

 ings of the actual skulls. There is no ugly suggestion 

 NO. 2761, VOL. I io] 



nowadays about a skull, and readers would then see 

 1 learly on what the conclusions rest. The picture of a 

 small valley-glacier producing a moraine-girdle is crude, 

 and does little to explain the conditions found by 

 earliest man in Europe. The absurdly small thickness 

 assigned to Cainozoic strata in the table is sanctioned 

 by British Museum guides, and is derived from the 

 narrow cult of the London Basin by geologists in 

 southern England. But we turn to the text and the 

 living illustrations, to the proud dignity of Cervus 

 giganteus, unconscious of his vulgar little enemy in the 

 rear, and to the sleepy hippopotamus about to fall upon 

 the stakes ; then once more we cordially thank the 

 authors. 



(2) So much is problematic when we seek to sum- 

 marise " the world-story " that we doubt the wisdom 

 of drawing up charts which simulate those derived from 

 written history. Mr. Reeves's book is, however, very 

 useful to the teacher ; but it necessarily contains much 

 on which we await further information. By reserving 

 the theromorphs, for example, for the Trias, the 

 author is able to state that the Permian reptiles were 

 not at first clearly differentiated from amphibians. 

 The marvel, however, lies in the rapid rise in Permian 

 times of a mammalo-reptilian type. The hypotheses 

 of the earth's origin do not fit well with tables showing 

 in detail the " periods " of man's occupation of the globe. 

 We have the " solar planetary epoch," the Carboniferous 

 " period," and later the La Tene " period." Unless the 

 geological section is greatly extended, undue emphasis 

 is thrown on the analysis by archaeologists of the 

 progress of early man in the European area. Prof. 

 Sollas's estimates, made in 1909, are wisely taken as a 

 basis for suggesting, by thickness of strata, the relative 

 lengths of geological periods. The author's references 

 to literature should aid the schoolmaster who attempts 

 to deal with man as " a part of Nature." But how are 

 other forms of teaching, in Kentucky, in Middlesex, and 

 elsewhere, to be reconciled with this high ideal ? 



" G. A. J. C. 



Aesthetics. 



(1 ) liar mollis 111 and Conscious Evolution. By Sir Charles 

 Walston (Waldstein). Pp. xvi + 463. (London: J. 

 Murray, 1922.) 215. net. 



(2) The Poetic Mind. By F. C. Prescott. Pp. xx + 308. 

 (New York : The Macmillan Co. ; London : Macmillan 

 and Co. Ltd., 1922.) gs. net. 



(1) J "J ARMONISM, whatever its attraction as a 



X 1 theory, has chosen very unharmonious 



terms for its expression. Sir Charles Walston's theory 



is in his own words, that conscious evolution in the 



