Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/798



THE ANCIENT

OF

1 vol., 8vo. With Two Plates and Four Hundred and Seventy-six Woodcuts.

"A goodly volume of more than six hundred pages, illustrated by nearly as many excellent woodcuts, discoursing learnedly of nothing save stones and streams, and finding in them sermons of great and, to many readers, novel interest. It might have been supposed, when Mr. Evans had published his well-known work on the 'Coins of the Ancient Britons,' that he had gone back as far as possible in the history of our land and nation; but in archaeological as in other sciences, there is in the lowest known depth one lower still remaining to be fathomed; every chamber opened to the light discloses others lying beyond it. From a people who had no literature, or none of which they have left any trace beyond the rude characters inscribed on their rude coins, we are now carried back to tribes and races which possessed neither coins nor letters; people who have left us neither their sepulchres nor their ashes, nor indeed any trace of their existence, save the rude triangular or sub-triangular fragments of worked stone which served them for tools or weapons; and even these are usually found buried beneath the wreck and ruin, it may be, of continents or islands which have long since been worn and wasted away. The publication of this work is remarkable as an evidence of the quickened pace which characterizes scientific research in our days."—Nature.

"The subject-matter of the volume is divided under the heads of Neolithic, Cave Implements, and Implements of the River Drift, in each of which a classification is made of the forms peculiar to these periods, and, what is of the utmost consequence in a work of this character, it is illustrated by no less than 476 well-executed woodcuts.

"In dealing with historic notices of stone and bronze weapons it might be thought that little could be added to the knowledge we already have; our author has, however, contrived to bring forward such a mass of fresh evidence from ancient authors as would alone have sufficed to shape the arguments of those who still deny the succession of the stone and bronze ages."—Athenaeum.