"REVIEWS. 
289 
the reader. Of course, in such a work the notes and references must be 
manifold, and we think that the method of placing them at the end of thd 
volume both tends to lend the pages a better shape and to make the notes 
more carefully studied by the reader who refers to them. 
The author regrets that his book had almost gone through the press 
before Darwin’s celebrated volumes on “ The Descent of Man ” had made 
their appearance ; but he congratulates himself on the fact that he has 
arrived, without the great English naturalist’s aid, at practically the same 
conclusions. Dr. Buchner, of course, traces man through the different tribes 
which gradually, step by step, lead down almost to the brute. He gives 
numerous quotations from travellers of repute, showing the low mental^ 
moral, and physical condition of these savages, and then he points out how, 
even in their anatomy, they approach the apes. Then he gives the nume- 
rous instances which have, during the past ten years, been brought forward 
regarding pre-historic man, and he shows conclusively that in many of the 
examples the skeleton — especially the skull — possessed, in a marked degree, 
characters that are now not exhibited by any living creature, save certain 
of the quadrumana. In all his observations on this point of course it is 
impossible to go against him. We mean, that for any man at all conversant 
with anatomy, such a line of reasoning as would be opposed to Herr 
Buchner would be in the highest degree absurd. Here you have man pos- 
sessing the same skeletal formation, or nearly so ; the same heart, lungs, 
thyroid, diaphragm, liver, stomach, and intestines ; same kidneys, same 
spleen, same pancreas, same organs of reproduction, nearly the same hands, 
and a closer allied brain than that possessed by any other mammal. And 
notwithstanding all these important details of anatomy you are asked to 
believe that man was made from clay — though he hardly contains a 
particle of its most universal constituent, alumina. Assuredly, all reason- 
able men will go in with Dr. Buchner, and will believe that man must 
have come from the apes, a doctrine which has so much to support it, 
rather than the other view, which is merely a questionable hypothesis of 
the almost untranslatable Holy Writ, and which, besides having nothing to 
support it, is opposed on the most important chemical grounds to which 
we have alluded. 
There is only one instance in which it seems to us that the author is 
incorrect, and that is a case that may fairly be forgiven him, for the best 
authorities in France are of the same opinion. It is in reference to the 
Moulin- Quignon jaw-bone, which he in common with the Frenchmen pro- 
nounces to have been a fossil. We cannot regard the bone as in the least 
degree antique. It seems to us unquestionable that it was a bone of recent 
formation, which was imposed upon the French savants who obtained it. 
In our opinion Mr. Busk’s method of examination was the only correct one. 
He sawed the b6ne through, and obtained the same peculiar smell which is 
so well known to those who manipulate recent bones. It is utterly out of 
the question that this peculiar smell could have been obtained from any but 
a recent bone, and therefore we regard the Moulin-Quignon jaw-bone as 
representing a scientific canard. However, there are other specimens 
whose antiquity is beyond question, and of them Herr Dr. Biichner gives a 
YOL. XI. — NO. XLIY. U 
