220 REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 
more human apes have existed, as in the supposed case; and no 
Caliban, we admit, could have filled that intermediate state which 
thousands of years and many generations must have done. Could 
not time have accomplished this result? And what of the argu- 
ment that the ‘ commencing ” man would be too helpless to sur- 
vive? Are the more anthropoid apes in greater danger during 
infancy, than those smaller monkeys that thrive .so well in the 
tropical forests? Dr. Wilson seems to confound the semi-human 
and the idiot, but between them we can find nothing in common, 
and wonder that ‘‘ the half human intellect,” is to him so difficult 
a matter to realize. Natural selection places all other life -— or 
other agencies, if you will, effect it — in positions favorable to 
growth and increase, and why not an ape, less brutish than the 
gorilla, and even less human than the Bushman described by Lich- 
tenstein as presenting “ the true physiognomy of the small blue 
ape of Caffraria.” (Quoted by Lubbock, in Origin of Civilization. 
London, 2d edition, p. 8). 
While making many references to various savage races, Dr. 
Wilson argues really that man is man, of the calibre and ability of 
the great discoverers, rather than a species of many races, or & 
being of several species. Mere denial goes but a little way on 
this assumption. He overlooks that really but a mere handful, 
as it were, of the human species have effected that advancement 
which simply benefits the whole. China could never produce a 
steam engine except as a copy; and the Algonquin Red Indians 
of this continent are as permanently hunting tribes, and nothing 
more, as the moon to Caliban was the ‘ lesser light ” in compari- 
son with the sun. So there is a vast difference in the mental cali- 
bre of the monkeys, which evolution could alone have brought 
about; and the Kumbekephali, that Dr. Wilson so ingeniously 
brought to light from their hoary graves in Scotland, gradually 
evolved all those capabilities which the relics of the graves have 
shown, as interpreted by the learned author of “ Prehistoric An- 
nals of Scotland,” that they were finally possessed of. 
The third chapter, entitled “‘Caliban’s Island,” is again an equal 
mixture of ethnology and the drama; but the conclusion, leaving 
_ Shakespeare’s home of Caliban at rest, takes up the question of 
_ the home of those hypothetical apes that in their own onw 
march of improvement are asserted by the evolutionist to have 
ven birth to man. Dr. Wilson cannot see in Borneo an island 
payee, lee: 
BCE Es etc E 
