The Migration from Shiner. By Captain G. Palmer. (Hodder and
Stoughton.)—This little volume, which deals mainly with the peopling of America, is merely made up of extracts from well-known writers, such as Humboldt, Prichard, Sir W. Jones, and Rawlinson. This is, perhaps, just as well, the author apparently having very slender pretensions of his own. He treats his subject in a very crude fashion, and has clearly no real grasp of the arguments which have convinced many eminent thinkers of the great antiquity of the human race. Lyell, Huxley, Darwin, and Lubbock all contradict the Bible in their theories, and so their views are "miserable cobwebs of so-called science," mere "speculative philosophy, which grows every year more wild." We should have thought, for our own part, that these distinguished men, whatever opinion we may have of some of their conclusions, deserved at least to be classed among the most patient investigators of Nature. To talk in this way, is a sure sign of ignorance and bad-taste. Captain Palmer, no doubt, imagines that he is serving the cause of belief, but we fear that ho is rather too impetuous a champion. We do not want to see Bishop Colenso compared to Tom Paine. It is assumed, as a matter of course, that all tradition, wherever found, which bears any resemblance to the Mosaic Books, was necessarily derived from them. We need hardly say that recent investigations by no means favour this theory, though net so long ago it was generally accepted. Again, is it not rather absurd to pretend not to know on what grounds Dar- winians base their belief that tho human race has gradually been developed from a very low type, and is there much meaning in adding that the authority of Scripture is dead against them ? The author must know perfectly well that they have given the reasons for their belief, though, of course, he is quite at liberty to reject them, as nonsense.
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