'April 25, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



633 



man, that mite, that mere atom, that ephem- 

 eral fragment of nature! How insignificant 

 a goal; and yet, strange paradox, that mite 

 and that atom is able to comprehend nature, 

 and great enough to know his own littleness. 

 Alone among earth's creatures this being has 

 intelligence fine enough to perceive that his 

 thought is everything, even though it be " but 

 a flash in the midst of a long night"; and 

 even though all life be " only a short episode 

 between two eternities." 



Reflections of this sort must certainly have 

 inspired the minds of the authors when writ- 

 ing many pages of this memoir; and in the 

 reviewer's judgment the work has suffered 

 nothing in consequence. Not long ago one 

 Anatole France wrote a natural history of 

 penguins. It is a capital work, and has 

 opened our eyes to new and alluring possi- 

 bilities of ornithology. But in the preface the 

 author lays down certain rules for the guid- 

 ance of fellow naturalists if they would greatly 

 extend human knowledge and leave imperish- 

 able monuments behind them. Now assuredly 

 Drs. Clarke and Ruedemann have done these 

 things, as this memorial witnesses, yet they 

 have gone exactly contrary to rule. Whence 

 we infer that the learned academician must 

 have been mistaken, for surely no one will ac- 

 cuse him of ever being ironical. 



C. R. Eastman 



Carnegie Museum, 

 Pittsburgh, Pa. 



PalcBolithic Man and Terramara Settlements 

 in Europe. By Robeet Munro. New York, 

 Macmillan Co. 1912. Pp. 507. Price 

 $5.50 net. 



" This volume contains the Munro Lectures 

 in Anthropology and Prehistoric Archeology 

 for 1912, being the first course since the lec- 

 tureship was founded," in the University of 

 Edinburgh. It seems especially fitting that 

 the eminent archeologist after whom these 

 courses are named should himself be the first 

 to fill that lectureship. A standard is given 

 which is of the highest and which, we may 

 hope, subsequent lecturers will strive to main- 

 tain. 



Those who are not in the small circle of 

 prehistoric archeologists are prone to looTi' 

 upon their work askance, if indeed they do 

 not ignore it altogether. " Early Bronze is a 

 good enough term for articles in a museum," 

 they say, " but it does not suggest a spiritual 

 being. We can not get on terms of spiritual 

 intimacy with the Early Bronze people. For 

 all their flint arrow-heads, or bronze instru- 

 ments, we can not think of them as fellow 

 men." These prevalent views can come only 

 from a distorted perspective, a perspective in 

 which only the dull unrelated side of these 

 things is open to our vision — when we see 

 them as objects rather than as evidences. It 

 must be confessed that the specialist is often 

 more than indirectly responsible for this 

 prevalent attitude. To Dr. Munro we must 

 feel grateful for a masterful treatise which, 

 without neglecting the minutiae and details, 

 subordinates them to their true place in a 

 scheme of wider relations. His facts are evi- 

 dences, his evidences appear in their proper 

 place in the larger Culturgeschichte. We can 

 not be too grateful that, to use his own 

 phrases, " the gnawing tooth of time " has 

 allowed us to rescue from the " dustbins of 

 ages " these few pages of an early history 

 which archeological finds furnish. 



The volume is divided into two parts, the 

 first treating of Anthropology: Paleolithic 

 Man in Europe, with supplementary chapter 

 on the Transition Period, the second with 

 Prehistoric Archeology: Terremare, and their 

 Relation to Lacustrine Pile-structure. The 

 volume covers a ground which no other Eng- 

 lish one duplicates, that of Sollas being more 

 closely related to the first part, and that of 

 T. E. Peet to the second. 



Of the first part we have only two criti- 

 cisms: A map showing the locations of the 

 various described sites would add greatly to 

 the value of the exposition, and a chapter 

 dealing with the methods of burial would have 

 been a valuable addition. The excellent maps 

 incorporated in the author's Lahe Dwellings 

 of Europe, have their counterpart in the 

 second portion of the present work, which 

 deals with the Po Valley, and there is a chap- 



