21 DECEMBER 1901, Page 24

The End of an Epoch. By A. Lincoln Green. (W.

Blackwood and Sons. 6s.)—In The End of an Epoch we have an amusing jets d'esprit showing how the whole civilised world was suddenly depopulated and sent back to the desert stage by the accidental overturning of two jars of artificially bred bacilli. The brown dust escapes and spreads. In six days it takes effect, and people begin to die. In three weeks there is no one left in London but a very few old people who have lived out of the way of infection, and one man, Adam Godwin, who was happily inoculated with a new universal antitoxin just before the disaster.