Geology and Mineralogy . 219 



types in capacity and intelligence. The Cro-Magnons belonged 

 to Homo sapiens, the same species of man as ourselves, and 

 appear to have been the chief race of the Upper Palaeolithic 

 Period up to the very close of Magdalenian times, after which 

 they apparently underwent a decline. 



" The arrival of the Cro-Magnons and the introduction of the 

 Aurignacian industry are the first events of the prehistory of 

 Europe to which we can assign a date with any degree of confi- 

 dence; . . . we may record man of the modern type of Homo 

 sapiens as entering western Europe between 25,000 and 30,000 

 years ago" (260-261). 



" The chief source of the change which swept over western 

 Europe lay in the brain power of the Cro-Magnons, as seen not 

 only in the large size of the brain as a whole but principally in 

 the almost modern forehead and forebrain. It was a race which 

 had evolved in Asia and which was in no way connected by any 

 ancestral links with the Neanderthals; a race with a brain eapable 

 of ideas, of reasoning, of imagination, and more highly endowed 

 with artistic sense and ability than any uncivilized race w T hich 

 has ever been discovered" (272). 



In North America, the Indians were in the cultural stage of 

 the Stone Age when discovered by the Europeans, even though 

 their history may all be of very recent times, but one finds nothing 

 in the book about them. 



The printer's work is well done, and the volume is richly illus- 

 trated in line work and half-tones. Conspicuous are the many 

 illustrations of the ancient races of men as they appeared in life, 

 and the reproductions of their implements and art, the latter con- 

 sisting of engravings, paintings in colors and modelling, most of 

 which are found in the caves of France and Spain. All in all, 

 the book is by far the best account in the English language of 

 prehistoric man, and it gives a wonderful vista of the upward 

 evolution of the human family from the speechless animal state 

 into reasoning and speaking man. c. s. 



2. The Pernio- Carboniferous Reel Beds of North America 

 and their Vertebrate Fauna ■• by E. C. Case. Pub. No. 200, 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1915, pp. 176, 24 pis., 50 

 text figs. —This very valuable work, the fifth contribution by 

 Professor Case to our knowledge of the life of late Paleozoic 

 time, is a general summary of the known vertebrates of the 

 Permo-Carboniferous strata of North America, the stratigraphy 

 of the beds, and the topographic and climatic environment of the 

 time in the Great Plains-Rocky Mountains area. The author " is 

 convinced that the stage of evolution of the vertebrates, their 

 stratigraphic position, and the accompanying invertebrates in- 

 dicate that the beds are of Permo-Carboniferous age, and this 

 conclusion is reached with a full knowledge that the evidence 

 from fossil plants is in favor of the Permian age of the beds " 

 (3). More accurately, "it may be roughly stated as from the 

 middle of the Conemaugh to near the top of the Permo-Carbon- 

 iferous" (95). 



Am. Jour. Sci. — Fourth Series, Vol. XL1, No. 242. — February, 1916. 

 16 



