‘unhesitatingly the calculation as tc the age of the 
_ the age of the bones found in the cypress swamps 
680 REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 
have always been oceans. These lands in all probability were, 
for the most part, volcanic islands or summits of volcanic ranges, 
for of this nature are all the islands over the interior of either 
ocean that are not of coral origin.” 
‘The extracts we have given, rather than any words of the 
reviewer, attest the clear and comprehensive manner in which the 
author treats of a difficult, and abstruse theme. The publishers 
have issued the volume in a most attractive style. 
MAN IN THE Past, Present AND FuturE.*— We are assured by 
the modest author of these lectures that their publication was the 
result of ‘‘the extraordinary favor which the public has hitherto 
manifested towards all the literary productions of the author with- 
out exception.” They seem to be a digest, with liberal quotations, 
of the writings of Huxley, Schaffhausen, Vogt, Haeckel and 
others, on man and his origin. The main facts as to the antiquity 
of man are given, with a chapter on his simian origin, while the 
future of man occupies the last third of the book. We have not 
been able to find that the author is an original investigator in 
anthropology, and with his hearty contempt for philosophy and 
pity for any one who believes in such infantile notions forsooth 
as the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, we doubt 
whether his superficial mode of treatment is calculated to win the 
regard of his readers to anthropological studies. 
The crude and sophomoric style of the third chapter is more sub- 
dued in those on the antiquity and origin of man. But even here In 
matters of detail the author is not invariably reliable. He accepts 
portions of 
the human skeletons found in the “coral rock” of Florida, though 
it has been stated in this journal (vol. ii, p. 343, Oct., 1868) by 
M. De Pourtales, the original discoverer of the specimens, that 
they were not from a coral formation, but that he took them me 
a “ fresh water sandstone on the shore of Lake Monroe, associated 
with fresh water shells of species still living in the 
date can be assigned to the formation of that deposit at Jo 
: : yhether 
from present observations.” It has also been questioned s ‘ 
of Louisiana 1$ 8° 
e N0 
f recent 
* Man in the Past, Present and Future. A popular account of the ror a ê. 
scientific research as regards the Origin, Position and Prospects of the: ti 
the German of Dr. L. Büchner, by W. S. Dallas. London 1872. 
J.B. Lippincott and Co. 8vo, pp. 363. 
