282 Recent Literature, [ March, 
other race, the Eskimo, is most in accord with facts. We do not 
see that there are grounds for considering that any race on 
American soil was any lower in body, mind or culture than the 
existing Indians and Eskimo. Archzology has failed to indicate 
the existence of a race intermediate between the apes and man. 
Wherever traces of human beings occur, they indicate that man 
has everywhere appeared as man. Traces of a “ missing link” 
may yet be discovered. Any day may bring forth the proof, but 
sound reasoning from observed facts does not yet show that fos- 
sil man in Europe or America was any lower, if so low, as the 
existing Australians. To say with Nadaillac that primitive man 
once existed in America “in a state of the lowest barbarism, and 
but little elevated above the brutes, at an exceedingly distant 
epoch,” is to state what has not been proved. The high state of 
development and culture attained by the majority of the Indians 
of North America at the time of the discovery is to us a contin- 
ual source of surprise; the high degree of culture of the Eskimo, 
perhaps the most primitive race existing, is, in some respects, 
almost startling. We are far away from any traces of the missing 
link. The so-called “ Tertiary ” man, most often Quaternary, in 
regions where glaciers never existed, seems almost beside the 
question in the present state of our knowledge. 
The volume is elegantly printed, fully, almost lavishly illus- 
trated, and on the whole is the most comprehensive and readable 
view of this entrancing topic one can now obtain. 
INGERSOLL’s Country Cousins.!—Country Cousins is the title ot 
a little Look of breezy natural history stories, most of which have 
previously appeared in the Century, St. Nicholas, the Field (Lon- 
don) or other periodicals. Such books as these, full of true inner 
life of animals, brimming over with psychology without burden- 
ing their pages with the long word, do more to encourage a love 
of nature among the young, and to make biological students, than 
all the wearisome technicalities in which anatomists and zoolo- | 
gists often indulge when writing for a public that needs plain 
. The squirrel-mother’s care for the orphaned young is made 
the vehicle of much deep teaching; the shrews are depicted in 
all their true shrewishness; the birds of the brookside are inter- 
viewed at home; nature is visited in her winter quarters; the 
workings of a seaside laboratory are exhibited, and so on. . 
Ingersoll has common-sense ideas on the subject of snake “ fasci- 
nation,” and gives good directions for the formation and keeping 
up of a naturalists’ club. The hibernation of bats, bears, etc., 
the vitality of marine animals, rattlesnakes, the life of an oyster 
and of his enemy, the starfish, are among the subjects pleasantly 
treated of in this attractive volume. 
By Ernest 
1 Country Cousins. Short Studies in the Natural History of the United States. 
fie. 
