which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as
the primitive condition of our race:

'As Nature first made man,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.'

The remainder of the book, so far as it relates to the evidences of
man's antiquity, is mainly occupied with the consideration of the
glacial period, in its relation to the indications of man's first
appearance in Europe. It bears evidence throughout of the hand of a
master. The gigantic phenomena and wonderful agencies of that marvellous
period in geological history--its vast icefields and glaciers, with
their movements, drifts, and denudations--its coast ice and glacial
lakes and rivers--the risings and sinkings of level of islands and
continents, are all considered and discussed in a thoroughly intelligent
and scholarly manner. And here, also, amid the debris of this
far-distant and inhospitable era, has man left the traces of his
existence, as indubitably, according to Sir Charles Lyell, as the great
icebergs themselves. Not only is it proven that man coexisted with the
extinct animals, but also that he coexisted with the extinct glaciers.
We have not space, however, to follow out in detail this evidence.

The last five chapters of the book are devoted to the discussion of
certain subjects of vital interest and great moment just now in the
scientific world--the theories of progression, development,
transmutation, and variation of species. It seems, however, to be the
intention of the author to give us, not so much his own views as a
general resume or outline of the tendencies and conclusions of the
scientific world upon these subjects. This he does with his usual
fulness, candor, and impartiality; and the reader at the same time
gathers from him that he is strongly inclined to accept the doctrine of
the origin of species by 'variation and natural selection,' and to
accord vast periods of time for the workings of that law of development
and transmutation which he believes to pervade all mundane affairs.
Considerable space is devoted to the consideration of man's place in
nature, and especially to the discussions arising out of the comparison
of the human and simian brain; and while the author fully admits the
vast gulf placed between man and the animal creation below him--a gulf
which science cannot bridge--by virtue of the moral and religious nature
of man, yet he pointedly protests against confounding distinc