Reviews—Prof. Boyd-Dawkins—Early Manin Britain. 371 
needles of stibnite, but no stibnite occurs with the cinnabar 
contained in the clay-seams. Close to Selvena exists a solfatara 
discharging carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen in large quan- 
tities ; and it appears highly probable, that this solfatara has played 
an important part in the formation of these deposits.! 
REVIEWS. 
es ig 
J.—Earty Man rn Brirarn, anp His Phack In THE TerRTIARY 
Preriop. By W. Boyp Dawxtns, M.A., F.R.S., ete., ete. Svo. 
pp- 537, 168 Woodeuts. (London: Macmillan & Co.) 
HE literature of Man’s antiquity grows apace. Lyell, Lubbuck, 
Stevens, Evans, E. B. Tylor, James Geikie, and Prof. Dawkins 
himself have contributed volumes bearing more or less directly upon 
the subject. His ancient stone implements and weapons, his flint- 
chips, his megalithic monuments, have been described in detail. 
The evidence of his antiquity and early history both at home and 
abroad has been summed up; and his contemporaneity with large 
mammalia now extinct in this country has been admitted by all 
capable of forming an opinion upon the subject. His relation, how- 
ever, to the “(treat Ice Age,” is still a matter undergoing investiga- 
tion—it is a vexed question, and geologists will therefore turn to 
Prof. Dawkins’s new work with eagerness to learn the opinion of 
one who has had such wide and varied experience of the subject. In 
his former work on ‘“ Cave-hunting” (published in 1874), the author 
dealt with a particular portion of the evidence; in the present work, 
though it naturally embodies the results of the former one, he treats 
generally of man’s early occupation of Britain, as deciphered by the 
geologist, the archzologist, and the historian. 
The author commences with a brief sketch of the history of life 
through past ages, and he observes that ‘The invasion of Europe 
by the placental mammals is the great event which is the natural 
starting-point for our inquiry into the ancient history of man, since 
the conditions by which he was surrounded, on his arrival in Europe, 
form part of a continuous sequence of changes, from that remote 
period down to the present day.” 
Existing orders and families of the placental mammalia are known 
to us for the first time in the Eocene period. The fauna and flora 
and geographical changes of the period are, however, described at 
more length than seems necessary (24 pages), with a full-page 
illustration of “Mid Eocene Forest of Bournemouth, overlooking 
Lagoon.” Such matter would seem more appropriate to a manual 
of geology, especially as in a concluding paragraph headed “Man not 
here,” Prof. Dawkins says, “It is obvious that man had no place 
in such an assemblage of animals as that described in this chapter. 
To seek for highly-specialized man in a fauna where no living genus 
of placental mammal was present would be an idle and hopeless 
' See in connexion with this subject: A Contribution to the History of Mineral 
Veins by J. A. Phillips, F.G.S., Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. 35, p. 390. 
