40 



On the Antiquity of Man ; a Review of " LyelV* and 

 Wilson!''' By J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.E.S., F.G.S., 

 Principal of M' Grill College and University, Montreal. 

 Communicated by the Author. f 



Questions of human origins have always been popular, 

 and have been agitated in all sorts of forms. Next to the 

 dread question of the unknown future, the long-buried past 

 is one of the most attractive subjects of inquiry ; and while 

 the faith of the Christian rests for both on the statements 

 of Holy Scripture, the imagination of the poetical or the 

 superstitious, and the reason of the philosopher or the 

 sceptic, have found ample scope for exercise. In our day, 

 geological investigation on the one hand, and antiquarian 

 and philological research on the other, have given an exact 

 and scientific character to such researches, which, without 

 detracting from their interest, has fitted them to attract a 

 more sustained and systematic attention ; hence the appear- 

 ance of such works as those above named. .One of these 

 works is the summing up of the geological evidence in rela- 

 tion to the origin of man, by one of our greatest masters of 

 inductive reasoning. The other is the effort of a skilful 

 antiquarian and ethnologist to apply to the explanation of 

 the primitive conditions of the old world the facts derived 

 from the study of the more recent primitive state of the 

 western hemisphere. Both books are very valuable. Their 

 methods are quite different, and their results as well ; and 

 it may be truly said that the geologist might have profited 

 by the labours of the western antiquarian, had he known of 

 them in time ; and that the antiquarian might have found 

 some new problems to solve, and difficulties to remove, had 

 he read the work of the geologist. For this, among other 



* The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man ; with Remarks on 

 Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation. By Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S. 

 8vo, pp. 520, Illustrated. London, John Murray ; Montreal, Dawson Bros. 



Pre-historic Man — Researches into the Origin of Civilisation in the Old 

 and New World. By Daniel Wilson, LL.D,, Professor of History in Uni- 

 versity College, Toronto. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 488-499, illustrated. London, 

 MacMillan & Co. ; Montreal, Dawson Bros. 



t Yx. m. the " Canadian Naturalist," 1863. 



