518 Reviews — Early Man in America. 



left little published work ; his most important geological communica- 

 tion was his paper on earthquakes, which was read at five successive 

 meetings of the Royal Society in 1760, and which met with such 

 approval that he was shortly afterwards elected a Fellow. In addition 

 to this work he spent much of his leisure time in geological excursions, 

 and in these obtained a wonderfully accurate idea of the correlation 

 of the strata of the south and east of England, based entirely on 

 lithological characters, which, fortunately, was put in writing by 

 one of his friends and has thus been preserved. He was a friend 

 of many of the chief men of science of his day and more especially 

 of Herschell and Cavendish, with both of whom he frequently 

 corresponded on scientific matters. It is on record that the first idea 

 of using the torsion balance as a means of determining the density of 

 the earth was suggested to Cavendish by Michell, who, indeed, made 

 such an apparatus, but not, however, one of sufficient delicacy for 

 the purpose, so that itwas left for Cavendish to carry the experiments 

 to a successful conclusion. His only other published work was 

 a small book on artificial magnets, which embodied much of the 

 experimental work he did while at Cambridge. 



This memoir, written in the author's accustomed literary style, is 

 eminently readable, and contains a very interesting account of this 

 little-known Woodwardian Professor. 



W. H. W. 



III. — Hecent Discoveries relating to J^arlt Man in America. 

 By Ales Hrdlicka. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, Bull. 66, 1918, pp. 65, pis. xiv. 



ACCORDING to Dr. Hrdlicka there is still no evidence of really 

 fossil man in North America. He refers especially to the 

 human remains found in the asphalt of llancho La Brea, California 

 (J. C. Merriam, Science, n.s., vol. xl, pp. 198-203, 1914), and to 

 those found with Pleistocene mammals at Vero, Florida (see Geol. 

 Mag., Dec. VI, Vol. IV, p. 4, 1917). The skeletons at Vero are 

 said to be undoubted interments, and the remains from La Brea also 

 appear to be those of a modern American Indian. 



IV. — American Fossil Horses. 

 EQUiDiE of the Oligockne, Miocene, and Pliocene of North 

 America, Iconographic Ttpe Revision. By Hknrt Fairfield 

 OsBOEN. Mem. American Mus. Nat. Hist., n.s., vol. ii, pp. 1-217, 

 pis. i-liv, and 173 text-figui-es, 1918. 



THE evolution of the horses in North America has long excited 

 wide interest, and has been much discussed in popular writings 

 as well as in scientific memoirs. The statements of fact needed for 

 this discussion, however, have hitherto been scattered in numerous 

 technical notes and papers, often without adequate illustration, and 

 it has been difficult to realize the nature of the evidence. "We are 

 now indebted to the American Museum of Natural History for an 

 exhaustive summary of the known Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene 

 species, with exact copies of all the original published figures of the 



