Revieivs — Southall's Epoch of the Mammoth. 357 



distinguisliecl our great literary geologist. The new book is how- 

 ever a great improvemeat oa the old. Many lengthy disquisitions 

 are wisely left stored up in the latter, whilst many new facts are 

 referred to, so that the present compact volume is not only cogent 

 in advocacy, but contains much information on the subject on 

 which it treats. When we have observed that there is a lack of 

 original research (to which it does not, however, pretend), we have 

 mentioned the weak point in the work as a contribution to deduc- 

 tive science. The tendency of the work is strongly in favour of a 

 geological chronology substantially in harmony with inferences 

 drawn from the writings of Moses. 



Ethnology is referred to, in order to found an argument that the 

 unity of the race requires tliat the flint-tool men could not have been 

 precursors of the civilized Egyptians. As we do not know that they 

 "were contemporaries, they are concluded to have been offshoots and 

 successors ; and therefore, as Egyptian civilization is not more than 

 ten thousand years old, so neither can the gravel-drift men be. 



The lake-dwellings are removed from the question by proofs of 

 their use within the historical period. " Of course some of them 

 may be 4000 years old ; but there is no evidence to prove that the 

 oldest is older than 3000 years." The same is the case with the 

 refuse-mounds, in both hemispheres. The " three ages " are, in 

 Dr. Southall's hands, contracted in dimensions by the proofs that 

 stone and bronze, stone and iron, and all three, have been in use 

 together. The last in Chaldaaan tombs ; bronze, iron, and some- 

 times flint, in Assyria ; stone, in Egypt down to the eighteenth dy- 

 nasty ; stone and bronze in the Troad down to the seventh century 

 B.C. ; that there has been no stone age in Africa,^ that iron was 

 unknown to at least one great tribe of Scythians at the beginning of 

 our era; that, in America, stone and bronze are found together; 

 that the metals do not appear in Western and Northern Europe until 

 just before a.d., and stone continued afterwards in use also; and, 

 lastly, that in a considerable part of Europe there never was a 

 bronze period at all. He concludes, so far as this branch of evidence 

 is concerned, that there was no gap between the Palseolithic and 

 Neolithic ages, therefore no immensely long period is required. 

 "Behind the Pyramids in Egypt, and the cities of Erech and 

 Calneh in Southern Babylonia, there is nothing, and nothing to 

 indicate the earlier presence of the human race. There was no 

 Palseozoic age, in fact, no stone age, in those countries." In brief, 

 the argument is, — the first populations of Europe came from Asia ; 

 the first people in Asia, those of Chaldeea and Mesopotamia, like the 

 people of Egypt, appear on the scene in a civilized condition from 

 6000 to 10,000 years ago : the first Europeans can be no older than 

 this. The author quotes the opinions offered at the Stockholm 

 Conference that the first iron age shown in Scandinavia is in the 

 fourth century ; and therefore where, as in Scandinavia, this was 

 preceded by a stone age, the latter need not be assigned to any 



' This seems to be a singular oversight, as stone implements are abundant in Cape 

 Colony and elsewhere, and have been fully noticed. — Edit. Geol. Mag. 



