4 NOVEMBER 1893, Page 11

The Lost Atlantis, and other Ethnographical Studies. By Sir Daniel

Wilson. (D. Douglas.)—These eight essays, the post- humous work of a highly distinguished student of anthropology, cover a wide extent of ground,—so wide that it is impossible within any available limits to give an adequate account of them. In the first essay, the fable of a submerged continent, still defended by some romantically minded persons, is quickly disposed of. Science gives us no reason for believing in any groat change in the Atlantic basin. The point actually discussed is the possible connection between the Old World and the Now. The writer leaves us, after all, in suspense. Phoenician voyagers may have reached the shores of America. It would not have surprised the writer to find that " shekels of the merchant-princes of Tyre had been discovered among the unexplored treasures of the buried empire of Monte- muse." The second essay treats of something of the same subject

under the title of "The Vinland of the Northmen," "Trade and Commerce in the Stone Age " takes us into a very obscure region, which is also explored, in one direction, in " Pre-Aryan American Man." Among the remaining essays, not the least interesting are those which touch on the racial characteristics of the Red Indian tribes. This is a book of great learning.