Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/261

Rh

author of this work is the highest authority in England—perhaps the highest in the world—upon the subject of which it treats. A gentleman of extensive means and a laborious student, he has taken up that "great division of Prehistoric Archæology which deals with the vestiges of man in the age of stone, and in the present volume we have the matured and comprehensive results of his inquiries. He has concentrated his main attention upon England, and given an exhaustive presentation of the evidence that has now been gathered, regarding the primitive state of the inhabitants of that island, when their implements of war and peace were chiefly constructed of flint. The volume is a valuable contribution to the obscure but interesting question of the antiquity of man, and the primeval conditions of his life. Mr. Evans is not a partisan, or a propagandist of any extreme views upon this subject, but deals with it simply as a scientific question, to be elucidated by the painstaking accumulation of the relics of antiquity which yet remain, and which are becoming more varied and abundant with increasing search and observation. He has figured in his pages about 800 objects—arrow-heads, daggers, knives, axes, hammers, adzes, picks, chisels, gouges, drills, scrapers, whetstones, stone-vessels, buttons, rings, necklaces, bracelets, and various other things—stating their locality and under what circumstances they were found. Great care has been taken with the illustrations, Mr. Evans having spared no expense in procuring the best artistic talent in order to secure the highest accuracy of representation. The book is valuable for the fidelity of its preparation, both in a scientific and artistic point of view, and, as it contains most of the information at present available with regard to the class of antiquities of which it treats, it will at once take eminent rank among treatises upon this branch of the natural history of man.

necessity of the microscope to the naturalist and physician, and its wide employment as a means of recreation and study by the non-professional, have created a demand for something that shall serve as a guide in the delicate operations connected with its use. So far as the management of the instrument itself is concerned, this has been supplied in various treatises; but, with the exception of incidental directions,