"572 BOOK REVIEWS. 



mound builders; Chapter VIII to the Crania of the mound builders; Chap- 

 ter IX to Manners and customs as a basis of ethnic relations ; Chapter X to 

 the solution of the question, Who were the mound builders?; Chapter XI 

 to the Unit}- of the human race, and Chapter XII to Chronometic measure- 

 ments as applied to the antiquity of man ; thus going over the whole sub- 

 ject in a systematic, comprehensive and philosophic manner, which is 

 equally as satisfactorj^ to the reader as it is demonstrative of the author's 

 erudition and ability. 



No one will lay the work down without feeling amply repaid for read- 

 ing it, whether considered as a mere work of scholarship or as a compen- 

 -dium of information upon the topics discussed. 



The mechanical execution of the work is first class and is fully equal in 

 paper, printing and binding to anj'thing from the older publishing houses 

 ot the East. — [ed. 



Introduction and Succession of Vertebrate Life in America, an Address 

 before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at 

 Xashville, Tenn., August 30, 1877, by Prof. O. C. Marsh, Yale College, 

 pp. 57. 



This is one of the most interesting papers we have ever read and we 

 give below" an imperfect summary of it. 



Starting out with the proposition that " to doubt evolution is to doubt 

 science, which is but another name for truth," Pr^f. Marsh gives in detail 

 the evolutionists' explanation and exposition of the origin, rise and devel- 

 opment of animal and vegetable life on the earth from its earliest dawn in the 

 Paleeozoic age down to the triassic period in which appear the first and low- 

 •est forms of mammalia ; thence he laboriously and carefully traces step by 

 step the development of the mammalian tribes, beginning with a single small 

 Marsupial found in the Trias, followed by the Edentates, the Cetaceans, 

 the Sirenians, the Ungulates, liodents, the Insectivores, the Carniyores, 

 ■and culminating in the Primates, composed of Lemurs, Apes and Man. 



The differences between the fossil vertebrate life of America and that of 

 Europe seems to consist principally in the fact that it did not appear in the 

 former during the Archfean, Cambrian or Silurian j)eriod"s, although dur- 

 ing this time more than half of the thickness of American stratified rocks 

 were deposited ; that the Devonian fishes of America were less numerous but 

 larger than those of Europe ; that in the great inland cretaceous sea of 

 North America the true osseous fishes were most abundant and the most 

 perfectly developed. The American Amphibians were all of moderate size 

 as far as their osseous remains have been found, but the foot-prints left by 

 some whose remains have not been discovered indicate animals larger than 

 .any of the class yet found in the old world. There is no evidence of Eep- 

 til.es in America in any rocks older than the Carboniferous, while true rep- 

 tiles have been found in the Permian rocks. A striking feature of the 



