new contributions, and the section which relates to the later history of Brahmanism has been entirely rewritten. The author of the work is Professor of the General History of Religion at the Dutch University of Leyden. All the Dutch universities have a special chair for the general history of religion, and after this model a special professorship for the same study has been established at the College de France, at Paris, and at the Catholic University of the same city.

FRANCE.

A work of great learning on the primitive history of the human race has been published by Prof. Franc Lenormant, a scholar already very favorably known by a number of other works on ancient history, (Les origines de l'histoire d'après la Bible et les traditions des peuples orientaux. Paris, 1880.) As the title indicates, the book compares the accounts of the Bible on the origin of man with the traditions of other Oriental nations. The first volume contains the time from the creation of man to the deluge; other volumes are to follow. The matter given in this first volume is divided into the following groups: The creation of man, the fall, the cherubim and the flaming sword, the fratricide and the foundation of the first city, the Sethites and the Cainites, the ten antediluvian patriarchs, the children of God and the daughters of men, the deluge. Numerous appendices contain translations and partly explanations of the most important documents from which the parallel accounts have been taken, as the cuneiform texts, Berosus, Sanchoniathon, Damascius, etc. A very explicit index facilitates the use of the book. At the head of his preface the author places the words of Montaigne: C'est ici, lecteurs, un livre de bonne foy; and he wishes to indicate by them that his investigations do not conflict with the belief in the Christian revelation and in the Catholic Church, to which the author belongs.

A new periodical has been begun in France, which is to be exclusively devoted to the history of religions. Its full title is: Revue de l'histoire des religions publiée sous la direction de M. Maurice Vernet avec le concours de MM. A. Barth, A. Bouché-Leclerq, P. Decharme, etc. Every year six numbers will be published. Its character will be exclusively historical and polemical, and dogmatic articles will be excluded. As the history of the Christian Church has already special organs, this periodical will chiefly treat of the ancient and modern religions of the East and the ancient religions of the West. It will, however, make an exception in regard to the introduction of Christianity in the middle and in the north of Europe. Every number of the Review will have seven sections: 1. Essays; 2. Critical reviews of recent literature by several contributors, as, on Ancient Egypt, by Maspero; on Old-Aryan Mythology and the Indian Religions, by A. Barth; on Assyria, by St. Gayard; on Greece, by Decharme; on Italy, by Bouché-Leclerq; on the Mythology of Gaul, by Gardoz; on Judaism and Christianity, by the editor-in-chief; 3. Notices and Documents; 4. Comptes Rendus; 5. Contents of other Periodicals; 6. Chronicles; 7. Bibliography.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.-50

ART. X.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

Pre-adamites; or, A Demonstration of the Existence of Men before Adam; together with a Study of their Condition, Antiquity, Racial Affinities, and Progressive Dispersion over the Earth. With Charts and other Illustrations. By ALEXANDER WINCHELL, LL.D. 8vo., pp. 500. Chicago: S. G. Grigg & Co. London:` Trübner & Co. 1880.

Of Dr. Winchell's successive publications none appears to have made so powerful an impression upon the public mind as the present magnificent volume. With the single exception of the uncandid and indiscriminate depreciation against the book, or rather against its author, in the "Independent," every notice which we have seen in the various periodicals, secular, religious, literary, or scientific, has been courteous and appreciative. These various notices clearly indicate that, however popular fancy may be excited by the disturbing utterances of science, a real and deep interest is felt in behalf of a real adjustment between science and Scripture. The great mastery of the vast subject manifested in the work, and the boldness, frankness, and sincerity of the spirit, will command the attention of even those who are not ready to adopt the conclusions of the volume in its attempt at furnishing at least one method of reconciliation. Without claiming to measure swords with an expert on his own grounds, we venture to state wherein his solutions, which are really addressed ad populum, do not convey a clear conviction to our own mind as one of the people.

The book does honor to the enterprising Chicago house that issues it by its entire style of material and execution, and its copious illustrations, among which especially is a fine theoretical map of the origin and migrations of the race, after the example of Haeckel, but with modifications by Dr. W. that make it truly his own. We may best illustrate Dr. Winchell's scheme under guidance of this map. Assuming then that our race takes origin at the now submerged land of Lemuria, of which Madagascar is an unburied remnant, our author traces the various routes of migration over the earth. From this primordial spot, first, there departs a line eastward to Australia, and thence over the Pacific isles to South America; and this marks the track of the earliest and lowest of the human race, the Australians. Next, westward curves a line into the southern half of Africa, cutting various graceful flourishes, and ending with an arrow's head at various points, and this is the next earliest and lowest race, the Negroes. The third line,

of a brown color, shoots up northward, and sweeps over all northern Europe and North America, symbolizing the great brown Mongoloid race. Finally a briefer line, ascends to western Asia, called the Dravidian; but as it begins to turn its course from north to west, it changes its color from dark brown to bright red, indicating that the Dravidian had become Caucasian, and is now curving his beautiful lines over the lands of modern Christendom. Our Adamic race is, therefore, traceable back to Lemuria through the Dravidian, and the change from dark to red, marks when and where by an upward development the Adamic race begins. Now in Genesis the word Adam in the Hebrew has really two meanings. It is a race name, designating a people, and a personal, designating an individual. As a race name, Adam begins with the reddening of the Dravidians into Adamites: as a personal name, Adam designates the earliest ancestor known to the Jews.

The process by which the transition is made from Dravidian to Adamite is a purely natural one, and is suggested to be by an albinosis. We are told, (p. 349:) "Dr. John Davy, after describing a fine Albino girl of Ceylon, adds: 'It is easy to conceive that an accidental variety of this kind might propagate, and that the white race of mankind is sprung from such an accidental variety. The East Indians are of this opinion; and there is a tradition or story among them in which this origin is assigned to us.'" But if a white race thus suddenly springs up by an albinosis, why not a black race by a melanosis?

Let us now suppose that a Dr. Rawlinson, assuming the literal biblical Genesis narrative with the Septuagint chronology, and a degeneracy of the race from its origin, should construct a counter ideal racial map. Assuming, not with Dr. W., that "man is a tropical animal," but that he is a semi-tropical being, created at the center, most suited to his highest nature, he finds that as the race diverges from that center it deteriorates under various depressing conditions, physical and moral, external and internal. He shows, from Peschel perhaps, how rapidly immigrations can take place in early ages when men are hardy and adventurous, and yet how large a share of the earth is found unoccupied even in late prehistoric times. He shows how much more plastic the race was in filling out its programme of possible divergences in the rapidly incurred conditions, and how permanent the traits acquired by the divergent varieties of race often become. He may find no great difficulty in showing how, after the flood, the three

sons of Noah may, within the thousand or two years from the flood permitted by the Septuagint, have sent the Mongol, the Negro, and the Australian, with all their present characteristics, to about their present abodes. Guided by that wonderful chart of ethnology, the tenth chapter of Genesis down to its date, he justly presumes that it must be supplemented by later history. The projecting lines of that chart are pointers, and Dr. R. finds it easy by simply developing them in their indicated directions to bring his pencil to every point of present human habitation.

Two points, especially, will Dr. W. make against this rival map. First, evolution, whether by genetic derivation, or by divine fiat, is always ascending, so that we must find the earliest race in the lowest; and, second, the rate of change in races is immensely slow, so that ages on ages are necessary for the production of the present divergences of races. On both these points, with our present light, we are disposed to concur with Rawlinson. On the first of these two points Dr. W. has written an able chapter, which, after our repeated reading, seems to us to miss the real point. Species, we admit, do as a general law, both by the Mosaic and Darwinian evolution, ascend; but certainly varieties of species do abundantly degenerate. Now Rawlinson may affirm that man is a species, and all his degenerations are varieties, and varieties, even in the animal world, are largely degenerate. Says Professor Cabell, of the University of Virginia, ("Unity of Mankind," Carters, 1859,) "Swine in some countries have degenerated into races, which in singularity far exceed any thing that has been found strange in bodily variety in the human race." That seems a pregnant sentence. Here is a vast animal species whose Adam comes first, whose varieties degenerate down an inclined plane to the lowest extreme. Professor Winchell's law seems to be reversed. The highest is first, the lowest is last. Adam we find at the summit, degenerating through the Mongoloid and the Negro to the Australian.

Our second point is a query whether the formation of a new variety requires a long period of time. And here, first, we can easily conceive a superior plasticity to variation in a young species. Endowed within itself with a certain range of possible variations, the human species quickly, by emigration ranging through the various conditions of the earth, may early fill out its programme of possible variations, and then the varieties may by continuance acquire almost the fixedness of species. A new

variety may start in a single individual. Seth Wright's celebrated new breed of sheep, whose legs were too short to leap fences, commenced with a single birth. And the following late and well-authenticated fact raises a grave suspicion that in the human species a variation of the extremest kind may commence with a single individual. We adduce it from the "Philadelphia Press" of May 2, 1880.

In the year 1879 there was born to Mary Salter, the Irishdescended wife of John Salter, an Englishman by descent, residing in number 1307 Lemon-street, Philadelphia, a beautiful boy with ruddy face and profuse silky-brown hair, who was baptized two weeks later. In a few days his face began to darken, his hair grew stiff and crisp and his eyes black. "At last he became as black as a full-blooded negro," and was attacked with spasms. Dr. Reynolds, of Eighteenth and Poplar streets, was called, and pronounced it a case of entire melanosis. On being visited by a "Press" reporter, Dr. Reynolds "said the case was a difficult one to explain, as there is so little medical literature on the subject. It was, he said, a case of what he would call melanosis, or over-production of pigment. Melanin, as the pigment giving color to the hair and eyes, and which gives the boy's skin its dark color, is called, is thought to be produced in the brain, the nerve center of the body. In this case there is a great over-production. The opposite state of affairs is where a negro turns white, or where portions of a white person turn even whiter. This is caused by a lack of production of pigment, and is termed leucoderma. It is produced by nerve affection. Colored persons with white spots upon them are not rare, neither are cases of white people having parts of their body whiter than the rest. The doctor said that the case under consideration was the first known where the whole body had become black." "I first saw the boy," said he, " when he was thirteen months' old. He was then as black as any negro, but he is now growing lighter, and when he relapsed in general health he grew darker again; but, on the whole, he has gradually lost his dark color, and will eventually be white." Future research may show that such sudden change from one extreme of race to another, at first perhaps as a disease, is no impossibility. Dr. Winchell suggests that the Caucasian came from the Dravidian by an albinosis. We prefer to suspect that the negro may have degenerated from the Caucasian, in accordance with the law of variety, by a melanosis. Dr. W. believes it incredible that the negro type could have arisen within