Contemporary Literature [pp. 549-569]

1875.] CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 56i
drews on the ancient beaches of Lakes Huron and Michigan, the conclusion
is reached that the gladal age closed abruptly and suddenly some 5,000 or
7~000 years ago. From an entirely different stand-point Mr. Southall arrives at a similar conclusion by ascertaining that the glacial age in Scandinavia and Scotland (and the north of England) continued down to so late a
period that pal~olithic man never (on account of the ice) penetrated those
countries. Only the stone implements of the polished stone-age are found in
Denmark and Scotland. Therefore, the ice-sheet continued in the north
down to the polished stone age. When was this? According to the arch~ologists themselves, this was some 6,000 or 7,000 years ago; it was, according
to them, the date of the Swiss lake-dwellings. But even these figures are regarded by Mr. Southali as much too great, he having shown that the pilevillages were occupied in France during the Carlovingian epoch, and in
Pomerania and Sweden even later.
We cannot in this brief notice pretend to touch all of the various points
made in this book. We shall only refer in conclusion to one very curious evidence brought forward to show that the mastodon has not been long extinct in
Wisconsin. We have a cut, taken from the Smithsonian Report for 1872,
which represents the "Big Elephant Mound" near Boscobel, in Grant
County, Wisconsin. This cut appears to us to be correctly designated as
the "elephant" mound, and Dr. P. R. Hoy, well known in scientific circles,
we believe, seems to entertain the same opinion from the information given
him. The elephant or mastodon, if cotemporary with the mound-builders,
lived, according to Mr. Southall, within the past fifteen hundred years.
We would call attention also to the evidences adduced to show that in
Egypt and the Mesopotamian Valley the metals were in use from the first,
and that in conjunction with stone. Man, in other words-in the words of
Mr. Southall-" began life in the east as a civilized being." The further we
go back in Egypt the more wonderful is the art, and back of this there is
nothing. There was no Palaolithic man in Egypt or Babylonia.
Upon the whole, Mr. Southall's work is one of great value. It is able and
scholarly, and evidently written in view of all the facts. It seems completely
to overthrow- the current arch~ological doctrines as to the extreme antiquity
of man, and to turn the startling discoveries of MM. Boucher de Perthes
and Lartet to the positive support of the biblical statements. It is also entertaining, and whilst full of interest to the scientific student, it is a suitable
book for the general reader. R.
Eldridge & Brother, of Philadelphia, have lately issued Christian Ethics;
or, the True Moral Manhood and L:ft of Duty, a Text Book for Schools and
Colleges. By Dr. D. S. Gregory, Prof. of Moral Science, Logic, and Metaphysics in the University of Wooster-a work in itself of a high order, and
reflecting great credit upon its author, while it is a token of promise of still
more from the same source.
A work of this kind is to be estimated according to two principal standards:
first, as a manual for teaching the science of which it treats, and next as an
exposition of or contribution to that science itself. Any given treatise on this