NEW BIOLOGICAL BOOKS 



The aim of this department is to give the reader brief indications of the character, the content, 

 and the value of new books in the various fields of biology. In addition there will frequently 

 appear one longer critical review of a book of special significance. Authors and publishers of 

 biological books should bear in mind that The Quarterly Review of Biology can notice in 

 this department only such books as come to the office of the editor. The absence of a book, therefore, 

 from the following and subsequent lists only means that we have not received it. All material for 

 notice in this department should be addressed to Dr. Raymond Pearl, Editor of The Quarterly 

 Review of Biology, 19 01 East Madison Street, Baltimore, Maryland, U. S. A. 



BRIEF NOTICES 



EVOLUTION 



MAN RISES TO PARNASSUS. Critical 

 Epochs in the Prehistory of Man. 

 By Henry Fairfield shorn. 



Princeton University Press 

 $3.00 Princeton, N. J. 



6 x 8|; xix +151 



This volume comprises six lectures 

 delivered to the students of Princeton 

 University on the Louis Clark Vanuxem 

 Foundation by the distinguished paleontol- 

 ogist of the American Museum of Natural 

 History. A sequel to the author's well 

 known "Men of the Old Stone Age," it 

 reflects very largely his personal experi- 

 ences in the research of man's prehistory. 



The evidence for the great antiquity of 

 man is reviewed and the record is carried 

 back to Tertiary times in East Anglia, 

 where flints of the Foxhall and rostro- 

 carinate type are now credited to Pliocene 

 man. The discovery of these artifacts by 

 Reid Moir (in 1909) opened a new epoch in 

 prehistory, for it divulged the existence of 

 a fire and tool employing man much more 

 ancient than indicated by any previously 

 known evidence. Following, in the 

 chronological order favored by Osborn, 



the successive precursors in the evolution 

 of Homo sapiens are considered, the story 

 of their discovery and subsequent study, 

 their geological relations, and especially 

 their mode of existence and cultural 

 achievements. The treatment, one has- 

 tens to say, is not that of a dry physical 

 manual. It is livened by personal anec- 

 dotes of the author's archeological adven- 

 tures and its viewpoint is exceptional. 

 In contradistinction to other writers who 

 direct their main attention to the ana- 

 tomical characters of fossil man, this 

 author seeks to discern the evidence for 

 the rise of his mind and spirit. To some 

 thinkers evolution has brought a sense of 

 something approaching the triviality of 

 man. They see him as one among many 

 in a struggle for existence, his survival the 

 result of fortuitous circumstance, his 

 ultimate destiny dependent on the vagaries 

 of nature. For Osborn, on the contrary, 

 the evidence is everywhere of his essential 

 uniqueness and sublimity. His earliest 

 achievements show him far removed from 

 anything bestial, and the author is 

 vigorous in his disapproval of what he 

 calls the myth of our ape-ancestry. 



Even Pithecanthropus is no lowly crea- 



570 



