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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Ethnology. By A. H. Keane, F.R.G.S., &c. Second Edition, 

 Revised. Cambridge: University Press. 1896. 



This is the second and revised edition of a valuable, widely 

 noticed, and in some cases severely criticised book, of which the 

 first edition appeared in 1895; and although the author, a man 

 of the widest reading and acquaintance with his general subject, 

 is not strictly a physical anthropologist, he has still supplied one 

 of the best introductions to the study of Man that even modern 

 zoologists can obtain. This revised edition is without those 

 instances of lapsus calami which were pointed out when the work 

 first appeared, references which the author doubtless welcomed, 

 as he himself has written here and there in a freely controversial 

 style. 



Man's position in the animal kingdom is sought to be deter- 

 mined from the purely zoological standpoint. " That he is an 

 animal, and as such must be related to other animals, is no dis- 

 covery of modern science. Then the schoolmen defined him as 

 animal rationale, a definition which the ethnologist may accept 

 without hesitation as at least partly true. What modern science 

 has done is to give precision and completeness to this definition, 

 by fixing the place of Man as an animal in the class of mammals, 

 and by separating him, mainly in virtue of his exclusive pos- 

 session of articulate speech, from other animals to whom the 

 reasoning faculty can scarcely be denied. Man will accordingly 

 here be considered as a rational animal possessing the faculty of 

 articulate speech." These sentences may be taken as Mr. 

 Keane's prolegomena, and evolution is used as the argument 

 throughout. 



The book is divided into two Parts, "Fundamental Problems'' 

 and " The Primary Ethnical Groups." In the first the evidence 

 for the antiquity of Man is very fully and ably treated, and a 

 feature of great convenience to British zoologists is a descriptive 

 list of the principal areas in Britain which palaeolithic Man is 



