Leading Men of Japan. By Charles Lanman. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. 1883. Pp. 421. $2.
Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, vol. i, for 1881. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 465.
A Manual of Chemical Analysis. Third edition, revised and enlarged. By Frederick Hoffmann, A.M., Ph.D., and Frederick B. Power, Ph.D. Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea's Son & Co. 1883. Pp. 624.
Compendium of the Tenth Census. Part I, Pp. 933; Part II, pp. 847. Washington: Government Printing-Office. 1883.
Annual Report of the Chief Signal-Officer for the Year 1880. Washington: Government Printing-Office. 1881. Pp. 1,120, with 119 Maps and Charts.
The New Cyclopædia of Family Medicine: Our Home Physician. By George M. Beard, A.M., M.D. New York: E. B. Treat. 1881. Pp. 1,506. Illustrated. $7.50.
First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. 1879-'80 By J. W. Powell, Director. Washington: Government Printing-Office. 1881. Pp. 603. Illustrated.
POPULAR MISCELLANY.
Fossil Man in America.—The question of the contemporaneity of man with the horse and other pliocene mammals was recently brought up, in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in the presentation of some fossil remains of horses by Professor Leidy. Professor Cope said that he believed that the contemporaneity would soon be satisfactorily established, and brought forward the Calaveras skull, which was said to have been taken from the gold-bearing gravel of California, and two observations of his own, made in 1879 in Oregon and California, as further confirmatory of the point. The "Carson foot-prints" of Nevada could also be placed in evidence, for they probably belonged to an ancestor of existing man. Professor II. Carvill Lewis insisted that caution should be exercised in accepting as evidence of pliocene man any facts as yet not verified by scientific observers. While the facts proving a post-glacial man were indisputable, the existence of pre-glacial man, either in our own country or in Europe, was not attested by any scientific evidence. The discoveries in California, made for the most part by miners in search of gold, carried with them several serious objections to the theory of great antiquity. The implements were identical in character with those of modern workman, ship, and the Calaveras skull closely resembled that of a modern Indian. The fact is not generally mentioned that implements in all respects similar to those of the auriferous gravel occur upon the surface of the ground, and are believed to be the work of well-known tribes. Neither the Calaveras skull nor the implements have suffered the amount of corrosion or weathering that a great antiquity should have given them. The adherence of compact gravel to the Calaveras skull, which is regarded as a sign of great antiquity, is no evidence at all of it, for the same is seen in the case of modern coins and other objects of known date. The very fact that the relics under consideration all occur in a gold-bearing gravel may indicate the method by which many of them were buried. Gold-mining was carried on, on quite an extensive scale, by the aborigines in these same gravels. School-craft describes an ancient shaft in Table Mountain two hundred and ten feet deep, at the bottom of which human bones and implements were found. The argument from analogy is so strong against the great antiquity of the California relics, that evidence of the most satisfactory kind must be required to support such a conclusion.
Dr. George M. Beard.—The late Dr. George M. Beard, whose articles in the Monthly will be remembered by many of our readers, was a graduate of Yale College began his medical studies in the same institution, and, after an experience of eighteen months as acting assistant surgeon in the United States Navy, received the degree of M.D. at the expiration of a two years' course in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of this city. Beginning practice in New York, he early turned his attention to the study of nervous diseases, and almost immediately began to write and publish on medical subjects. Among his earlier works "Our Home Physician," 1869, "Eating and Drinking," and "Stimulants and Narcotics," 1871, were designed for popular use, and have, we understand, had a wide circulation. In conjunction with Dr. A. D. Rockwell he published, in 1875, "Medical and Surgical Electricity." "Hay-Fever, or Summer Catarrh" appeared in 1876; "The Scientific Bases of Delusions," 1877; "Nervous Exhaustion," 1880; "American Nervousness, with its Causes and Consequences," 1881.
