Osborn’s “Age of Mammals.” 
One of the most notable books on evolution 
since the appearance of Darwin’s “Origin of 
Species,” was recently published by the Mac¬ 
Millan Company from the pen of Henry Fair- 
field Osborn, President of the New York Zoo¬ 
logical Society; President of the American 
Museum of Natural History; Professor of Zo¬ 
ology in Columbia University; Vertebrate Palae¬ 
ontologist in the United States Geological Sur¬ 
vey, and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology 
in the American Museum of Natural History. 
The book is entitled “The Age of Mammals,” 
in North America and Eurasia, and is the result 
of ten years of special research, as well in the 
ever growing literature on the subject as in field 
work. 
Professor Osborn has himself visited all the 
so-called bone quarries of North America, and 
many of those abroad, including the remarkable 
deposits of the Fayum in Egypt. Few persons, 
other than specialists in palaeontology, have any 
conception of the enormous array of facts that 
has been unearthed in recent years, and even the 
specialists will be surprised to see to what extent 
recent discoveries have filled in gaps which have 
been heretofore considered beyond the reach of 
possible attainment. 
When one considers the vast array of literature 
on even limited fields of recent history, such as 
the Renaissance or the Napoleonic Period, it is 
startling to consider how relatively little atten¬ 
tion has been given, except by students of science, 
to the vast period which preceded human history. 
Those who read Professor Osborn's remarkable 
book will realize that the subject covers millions 
of years, and closes long before the dawn of 
recorded history. Man has so long considered 
himself as the center of the universe, and has so 
reluctantly admitted his relationship with the rest 
of animated creation, that it is a shock to the 
popular mind to realize the vastness of the time 
that elapsed before man came into his own. The 
lessons to be drawn from this appreciation of 
those aeons of time lie at the basis of all modern 
questions—social, racial and even religious. 
The vision of some of the most advanced 
thinkers is even yet obscured by the lingering- 
cobwebs of the myths they absorbed in their 
youth. The Adamic theory—the origin of man¬ 
kind from a single pair or line—must now give 
way to a polygenetic derivation, and the theory 
of the origin of mankind in an Asiatic Garden 
of Eden, and his westward migration into Europe 
in successive Waves, must be now discarded in 
favor of the hypothesis of the development of 
existing races in their present habitats. 
Two of the most serious and persistent errors 
in popular anthropology are: 
First—The fundamental error in identifying 
nationality with race, shown for example in the 
use of the expression “Latin Race,” and 
Second—The even more subtle misconception 
shown in the identification of race with language, 
as for example the curious grouping of some of 
the most widely separated races in Europe under 
the term “Celtic Race.” 
Physical anthropology goes far deeper and is 
concerned with the elemental man only. It con¬ 
siders nationality and language as mere by-pro¬ 
ducts of man’s environment, and as of little more 
importance than the clothes he wears. 
The explanation of the wide prevalence of 
these errors seems to be in the fact that those 
who have given anthropology attention have ap¬ 
proached the subject from the point of view of 
man as the center of the creation, and they are 
also insensibly infected with the historic miscon- 
CLIMBING AFTER GOATS. 
Photograph by R. B. Hamilton. 
ceptions, which, though absolutely obsolete, Still 
permeate popular literature. In Professor Os¬ 
born’s book the student has, for practically the 
first time, the opportunity of approaching the 
study of man from the reverse direction. 
To begin with the history of mammals; to 
show the laws that have governed their evolu¬ 
tion, radiation, migration and extinction; to show 
how wasteful nature has 4 )een, not merely with 
individuals, but with whole types and groups; 
to show how one great group of mammals has 
replaced another, tending, however, in the main 
toward a higher development of the brain, is ab¬ 
solutely fundamental to a knowledge of anthro¬ 
pology. 
While the closing chapters alone of Professor 
Osborn’s book deal with man, so-called “fossil 
man”—the fossil man that Cuvier predicted 
would never be found—the greater part of the 
book is devoted to the animals which preceded 
him. In reading over the vast mass of material 
in the book, one comes to a true realization of 
the relative unimportance of man as an animal, 
and wonders how such a puny being could have 
survived in a world of huge and savage forms. 
The story of how he triumphed over the mam¬ 
moth, the cave bear, the cave lion and the giant 
dogs; of how he held his own during the terrible 
stress of the glacial period, is a story still to be 
written, but it is foreshadowed in these pages. 
Professor Osborn, in his introduction to the 
“Age of Mammals” gives first a brief resume 
of the history of palaeontology, and explains 
clearly the theory of dentition, and of foot form, 
and shows the relation of each to the environ¬ 
ment of the animal. He gives a most compre¬ 
hensive classification of mammals, living and ex¬ 
tinct, arranged to set forth relationship—the true 
purpose of any systematic grouping of animals. 
The Linnean classification was based on the idea 
of a distinct creation for each separate form, and 
while we have still retained, to some extent, his 
grouping, the ideal classification is now so ar¬ 
ranged as to express, in terms of species, genera 
or families, or sub-divisions of these groups, the 
relative relationship of different types, so far as 
arrangement can show such intricacies of de¬ 
scent. 
The main purpose and function of the “Age 
of Mammals,” however, is set forth in the bril¬ 
liant chapters dealing with the correlation of the 
Tertiary and Quaternary deposits in Eurasia and 
in North America. While many of these corre¬ 
lations will be subject to revision, probably by 
the author himself, nevertheless, in their essen¬ 
tial points there can be little doubt that the main 
features of the book will stand. In his discus¬ 
sion of the time duration of the different geo¬ 
logical periods, Professor Osborn gives the evi¬ 
dence without hazarding any strong opinions of 
his own, but two features appear very clearly— 
that as our knowledge advances, the horizon of 
the past recedes, and that the cry is continuously 
for more time, ever more time, to adequately 
explain the phenomena of evolution. 
The question as to which horizon in the Old 
World corresponds in time with a similar hori¬ 
zon in Western North America lies at the very 
root of the origin of the different groups of ani¬ 
mals. Priority in time is an indication of the 
area from which the particular group radiated, 
and Professor Osborn is the first one to seri¬ 
ously attempt, on a large scale, and for the en¬ 
tire Csenozoic period, a comprehensive correla¬ 
tion. As a consequence of his work along these 
lines, we can now tell with approximate cer¬ 
tainty the area in which certain great groups of 
extinct and living mammals originated. It was 
Professor Osborn who, for example, first pointed 
out that we must look to Africa as the center 
from which the proboscidians radiated, although 
some of the mammoths ultimately wandered as 
