164 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST. 
beautifully colored pictures in the caves of France, men in northwestern 
Europe were just beginning to polish stone instead of chipping it. 
Dr. Tyler shows that the earlier New Stone Age men were possessed 
of quite high civilization. They buried their dead, built temples, 
farmed, had numerous domesticated animals, made excellent pottery, 
plaited nets, and did rude weaving. Some of them built elaborate dwell- 
ings on the borders of lakes, while others lived exclusively on land. 
They seemingly had few wars, for their implements are all designed 
primarily for hunting or industry of other sorts. 
The further evolution of man was largely one of ethics and invasions. 
Dr. Tyler shows how the continued influx of more highly cultured 
peoples from the east, bringing with them different ideas and customs 
from those of the European New Stone peoples forced many changes 
in life. The continent became crowded, and war was the result. Along 
with war came the necessity for social life, pooling of interests, and 
steady progress. /Thought, both philosophical and practical, was stim- 
ulated. Metals superceded stone, and the New Stone Age was past. 
Remnants of it lingered on to the time of the Romans, but only in the 
secluded mountainous or heavily forested districts. pel Ops) the 
AN INTRODUC TION TO PALEONTOLOGY. By A. Morley Davies. London, Thos. 
Murby and Co.; New York, D. Van Nostrand and Co. $3.50. 
Mr. Davies has designed his book for purposes of teaching, par- 
ticularly of elemetary teaching. For this reason he begins with the 
animals that are most common as fossils, and which can most easily 
be studied by the beginner—the Brachiopoda. The method of treat- 
ment is to first describe some common species, from which the student 
.can get an idea of the general characters and variations of the group 
studied, and then give a brief systematic account of the entire group. 
References to living forms are rather few, and the illustrations are 
almost all of fossil species. 
Beginning with the Brachiopoda, the text goes on up through the 
vertabrates. It then returns, begins anew with the Echinodermata, 
and progresses downward, ending with the protozoa. There are certain 
features in the classification of the vartabrates that occasion surprise, 
as the reduction of the birds to the position of an order among the Rep- 
tilia, below the Ornithosauria, or Pterodactyls. Another feature is the 
absence of the Pythonomorpha; one wonders what is to be done with 
the saurians that have been referred to that order. 
But in spite of one or two innovations of questionable value, the 
book seems practical and attractive. Its style is sufficiently untechnical 
so as not to repel either the beginhing student or the general reader. 
The tables of formations are of value tothe person who does not wish 
to continually consult reference volumes. Unfortunately they apply to 
Europe alone, and are a trifie old-fashioned. One regrets that there is 
not such a book designed to fit the most modern developments of geology 
and paleontology. in America. Ge Ws.oms 
