The Childhood of the World: a Simple Account of Man
in Early Times. By Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S. (Macmillan and Co.)—Mr.Clodd's little book is a first essay in a work which will have to be done. Children will have to be taught about the prehistoric ages according to the discoveries of science. And it is not to be disguised that this means not according to the first chapters of Genesis. The conclusions which have been made tolerably familiar to grown-up persons of any education by the books of Mr. Tyler and Sir John Lubbock are stated in a com- pendious form for children by Mr. Clodd; and it is very interesting to see them put into this form, and to observe how much there is that could. be told to children and would interest them about tho childhood of the world. The style adopted by Mr. Clodd is perhaps a little too conde- scending. Young boys and girls are not attracted by ostentatious con- descension. But the book is one which very young children could under- stand, and which grown-up persons may run through with pleasure and advantage. It should be addod that it is expressly a religious book. The story is told as the account of a world planned and sustained by a Divine Creator. Except in a short chapter, in which Mr. Clodd rather goes out of his way to deny the existence of an evil power, there is hardly any perceptible collision with orthodoxy, and the religious tone of the book will be generally felt to be earnest and devout.
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