SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heating ice notice such Book, of the week as haw not tssii swerved for rsvisw in other forms.]
The Stone Ages in North Britain and Ireland. By the Rev. Frederick Smith. (Blackie and Son. 16s. net.)—It was certainly a fortunate beginning for the youth who observed the "colts" exhibited in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge that he had before amused himself with the fracture of flints for the purpose of procuring sections of fossil forms embedded in them. Beginning with the maxim, If man had no metal tools he must have made them of stone, he went on to inquire, How did he make them ? Here in this noble volume is the result. We cannot give it an expert criticism, and nothing else would be adequate. We must be content, therefore, with recommending it, with its three hundred and seventy-six spacious pages and its ample furnishing of illustrations, to the attention of our readers. One point, however, we may notice. Mr. Smith pronounces, but with the caution befitting the scientific man, in favour of tho human origin of the Eolith. Professor A. H. Keane, who furnishes the volume with an introduction, is more emphatic in his assent. Clearly these relics are winning their way to recognition. What is wanting is the imaginative power to realise how unlike the finished tool of to-day must have been its first beginning.
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