REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 559 
Tue CHILDHOOD or THE Worip.*— This tastefully printed little 
book will not, we think, disappoint those who take it up, pro- 
vided they expect no more than what the author states in the 
preface to be its scope and aim, which are “to narrate, in as 
simple language as the subject will permit, the story of man’s 
progress from the unknown time of his early appearance upon the 
earth to the period from which writers of history ordinarily begin.” 
“ As the Table of Contents indicates, the First Part of this book 
describes the progress of man in material things, while the Second 
Part seeks to explain his mode of advance from lower to higher 
stages of religious belief.” 
The first part, which is the shorter of the two, is too brief, and 
_Searcely sets forth the claims of prehistoric archeology to the 
tank of a science; although the author very properly states the 
main fact of that science, more than once, i.e., the very great 
antiquity of man. We think that he is too brief, in this first part, 
because it is possible he may not have said enough to excite the 
young reader’s attention and curiosity, and so cause him to look 
further into the subject of ee which offers so wide a field 
for research. : 
Mr. Clodd believes that man was created de novo, and not devel- 
oped, and starting with that assertion, notices in detail, ‘“ Man’s 
first wants,” his tools; then fire, cooking, pottery, the use of 
metals, and then touches upon language, writing, counting, and 
man’s wanderings about the globe; holding throughout, appar- 
ently, that all men have sprung from a common origin, which we 
link by no means demonstrated. At any rate, climate, to 
which he refers on page 47, and “the land they dwell in,” will not 
of themselves explain the variation now existing between the 
Several distinct types of mankind. Nor can we admit as true, 
the statement that America was peopled by tribes who “leapt 
across the narrow straits between Asia and America and wandered 
Over that vast New World.” This “leaping across narrow straits” 
does not appear to us to accord with the traces of archaic man 
already discovered in this country, as “the contemporaneity of 
man in America with the mammoth and mastodon may be regarded 
4s being satisfactorily established” and when we go back so far 
> The Seepage of the World; A Simple Account of Man in Early Times. By 
Edward Ciliodd, F. R. A. S. London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1873. Crown 
Svo, pp. 118, Cloth. 
