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LVIII. Notices respecting New Books. 



Man ; the Primeval Savage: Ms Haunts and Relics, from the Hill- 

 tops of Bedfordshire to Blackivall. By Worthixgton G-. Smith, 

 4'c. Pages i-xvi and 1-349, with 242 Illustrations by the 

 Author. 8vo. Stanford : London, 1894. 

 HPHE author of this interesting book makes a praiseworthy 

 -*- attempt to popularize the subject of Early Man, from a strictly 

 scientific point of view, with the evidences of his existence, his 

 modes of life, and his surroundings, in this parfc of the world at 

 least. Mr. W. Gr. Smith has done much in judiciously searching 

 for, and happily finding, tangible proofs of Man having occupied 

 certain sites now 7 buried beneath various deposits that have been 

 left by lakes and rivers during repeated superficial changes of the 

 land. Here some geological knowledge aids him ; and, as an 

 archaeologist with a good eye for the recognition of differences 

 between relatively old and new implements of flint, and of the 

 chips and blocks left in places during their manufacture, he tries 

 to piece together the broken history of Early Man once occupying 

 parts of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and Essex. 



Freely using the results of similar observations made by others 

 at various places, and recognizing the value set by anatomists on 

 certain human bones as indicative of special races, — and by 

 palaeontologists on the particular characters of the more frequent 

 bones of the lower animals found in gravels and other deposits of 

 Quaternary age, Mr. Smith has thus added greatly to his former 

 contributions to the Anthropological aud other Societies. 



In the first two Chapters he briefly treats of Primeval Man as 

 known by his implements of stone, found in caves, gravels, and 

 elsewhere, and by the rarely associated fragments of human skulls 

 and skeletons, the more frequent bones of animals, and remains of 

 plants ; and by the comparison of the bones of some of the lowest 

 races of mankind with those of the anthropoid apes. The probable 

 ways and habits of the early savages, and their surroundings, are 

 presented in picturesque descriptions by the pen and pencil of 

 modern civilization forced to acknowledge the barbarous and dis- 

 gusting habits of our probably cannibal progenitors. " Man at 

 that time was not a degraded animal, for he had never been higher; 

 he was therefore an exalted animal ; and, low as we esteem him 

 now, he yet represented the highest stage of development of the 

 animal kingdom of his time " (page 59). 



Of the primeval folk of England we have set before us by the 

 artistic author four pictures. One of them (on the cover) is a 

 woman sitting on a dead and broken tree-trunk, with her hair 

 turned up in Egyptian style, and in " full dress," consisting of a 

 waist-strap supporting a stone hache ; and a club lies handy. The 

 face of this savage is almost manly, perhaps tatooed at the corners 

 of the mouth, if not moustached ; and the ear is strongly pointed ; 

 a feature which still survives at Dunstable, according to page 51 



