280 Revieics — By Flood and hy Fell. 



over the gap between existing reptiles and birds. The Cretaceous 

 period yields, besides gigantic reptiles, fishes and plants more 

 modern in appearance ; while the Tertiary period offers, besides 

 many mollusca closely allied to the recent, others identical. It is 

 essentially an age of Mammals, Palms, and Exogens. The Mam- 

 malia are particularly interesting to the Evolutionist, yielding the 

 intermediate forms which bind together the Rhinoceros and the 

 Horse, the HipjDopotamus and the Pig, etc. 



While a study of Palaeontology shows that higher and higher 

 forms of life appeared from time to time, — that the oldest rocks 

 yield the simplest types, and the newer rocks the most highly 

 organized, —it also shows that each large group had, as it were, a 

 maximum development, and gave way or yielded up its sway to the 

 higher forms which succeeded, of which Man is the last. Neverthe- 

 less, although many forms became extinct, we have still the modified 

 descendants of all classes, and a few among the lower ones which 

 show little or no variation from the earliest types. 



Such are the results of Palaeontology. Into the other sections, 

 Zoology, Botany, Embryology, and Natural Selection, we need not 

 go ; we believe Dr. Chapman has given a very fair idea of the facts 

 which those subjects furnish towards the doctrine of Evolution. 

 The Anthropological Section is a little out of our line, but we 

 cannot be uninterested in the theory that man has descended from 

 an ape, which Dr. Chapman accepts, although he finds it impossible 

 to designate any particular ape as the remote ancestor. He gives a 

 plate of the faces of men and monkeys, and no doubt there appear 

 to be many ape-like men, and many man-like apes. He remarks that 

 " the more probable theory of the relationship of man to the 

 Anthropoid Apes is that they are very distant cousins, the posterity 

 of a common ancestor of some extinct form, whose remains have not 

 as yet been discovered." In regard to the birth-place of man, it 

 is involved in obscurity ; but Dr. Chapman leans to the idea that the 

 sunken land called Lemuria by Dr. Sclater, which once existed where 

 the Indian Ocean now rolls, might have been the birth-place of the 

 human species : and we cannot help suggesting what happy and 

 poetical ideas of a deluge might be started on such a notion. Poetical 

 ideas, however, will not do, as Dr. Chapman remarks ; for instead of 

 a Golden Age, from which man has fallen, the explorations of the 

 last forty years have proved that the first age was one of Stone. How- 

 ever, we must leave these questions — we cannot at present grasp the 

 idea of the Anthropoid origin of man — but we may rest com- 

 forted that whatever is the true history, the descent of man has 

 indeed been an ascent. 



H. B. W. 



II. — By Flood and by Fell ; ob. Causes of Change, Oeganio and 

 Inorganic, in the Material World. By E. Charlotte 

 Eyton. (8vo. pp. 127. London : G. T. Goodwin.) 



AS an attempt to popularize Natural Science, and particularly 

 Geology, this book deserves praise, but while it may serve to 



