tion" and "erosive action " have, however, rendered them a scattered people, while the mesozoic and cainozoic formations are filled with the modified and mixed descendants of the Jute and the Saxon.

He con

We hope that at some future time Professor Ramsay may work out the problems contained in his sixth chapter more in detail. cludes in the following words :

"When we come to consider the nature of the population inhabiting our island, we find it also to be greatly influenced by this old geology. The aboriginal tribes have been driven into the more barren mountain regions in the north and west, and so remain to this day— speaking to a great extent their aboriginal languages, but gradually melting up with the great mass of mixed races that came in with later waves of conquest from other parts of Europe. These later races settling down in the more fertile parts of the country, began to develop its agricultural resources. In later times they have applied themselves with wonderful energy to turn to use the vast stores of mineral wealth which lie in the central districts. Hence have arisen those densely peopled towns and villages where the manufactures of the country are carried on. Yet in the west, too-in Devon, and Cornwall, and in Wales, where the great slate regions are there are busy centres of population, where the mineral products are worked by the aboriginal inhabitants of Celtic origin.

"It is interesting to go back a little and inquire what may have been the condition of our country when man first set foot upon its surface. We know that these islands of ours have been frequently united to the continent, and as frequently disunited, partly by elevations and depressions of the land, and to a great extent, also, by denudations. When the earliest human population reached their plains, they were probably united to the continent. Such is the deliberate opinion of some of our best geologists. They do not assert it as a positive fact, but they consider it probable that these old prehistoric men inhabited our country along with the great hairy mammoth, the rhinoceros, the cave bear, the lion, and the hippopotamus, -that they travelled westwards from the Continent of Europe, along with these extinct mammalia, over that continuation of the land which originally united Great Britain to the Continent. But in later times denudations and alterations of level have taken place, chiefly, I believe, great denudations of the chalk, and of the strata that cover the chalk, and then our island has become disunited from the mainland. And now, with all its numerous inlets, its great extent of coast, its admirable harbours, our country lies within the direct influence of the Gulf Stream, which influences the whole climate of the west of Europe, and we, a mixed race of people, Celt, Scandinavian, Saxon, Norman, more or less intermingled in blood, are so happily placed that, in a great measure, we have the command of the commerce of Europe, and send out our fleets of merchandise from every port. We are happy, in my opinion, above all things in this, that by denudation we have been dissevered from the Continent of Europe,

for thus it happens that, uninfluenced by the immediate contact of hostile countries, and almost unbiassed by the influence of peoples of foreign blood, during the long course of years in which our country has never seen the foot of an invader, we have been enabled so to develope our own ideas of right and wrong, of political freedom, and of political morality, that we now stand here, the freest country on the face of the globe, enjoying our privileges, under the strongest and freest Government in the living world."

BARUCH SPINOZA.*

MUCH of the scope of the present work is theological, and the principles on which the Anthropological Review is conducted preclude the discussion of theological subjects. The Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus, however, contains much valuable information respecting purely scientific topics which have, since Baruch Spinoza gave to the world those profound works which will be for ever associated with his name, become even popular. As the learned and anonymous editor of the Tractatus observes :

"The Hindus preceded the Hebrews in civilization by hundreds, perhaps by thousands of years, and in their Vedas, which existed in writing centuries before the Jews became serfs to Egyptian taskmasters, they have not only given us a clear insight into their religious world, but have actually transmitted the record of this in the tongue which is the root of all the dialects spoken in Europe to the present day. It might have been that the Sanscrit Vedas had descended to us as our especial religious inheritance, when we should have had Brahm, Vichnou, and Siva as our triune divinity. The Zends, again, the religious books of the ancient Persians, are of great antiquity, and, as the Persians were nearer neighbours of the Jews than the Hindus, so do we find that they have influenced Jewish ideas in a much greater measure."

Much credit is due to the editor, and especially to the publishers, who have produced this valuable work in a compendious form and at a cheap price. Many readers will gladly peruse it, if only to study the thoughts of an author whose terse and vigorous style has raised him for the last two hundred years to the position of the best-abused author in philosophy. We would very much like to see the Ethica of the same author published in the same manner as the present volume.

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus; a Critical Inquiry into the History, Purpose, and Authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures: with the right to free thought and free discussion asserted, and shewn to be not only consistent, but necessarily bound up with true piety and good government. By Benedict de Spinoza. From the Latin; with an Introduction and Notes by the Editor. 8vo. London: Trübner and Co. 1862.

489

ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE NURSERY.*

MANY of the errors which pervade the educated classes of society are due to the diffusion amongst them, while their memories are strong, and before their understanding is matured, of statements contained in the school books forced upon their infant comprehension, which, although wholly at variance with known facts, become articles of compulsory belief for their acceptance. In the above little book, which we especially select as the most complete, as well as the most exact elementary geographical compendium in our language, the English public, which is always prone to view cheap literature with too favourable eyes, will find some exceedingly puzzling statements respecting the races of men. The author of this school compilation says, "man is adapted to live in all climates excepting those of extreme cold." We need not tell our readers that this is the reverse of the fact, and that man cannot live (and thrive) in all climates. We know not what idea of "adaptation" the child who reads this statement is expected to possess; but the simple fact that the Europeans in Bengal die out in the third generation, contravenes the assumption of the cosmopolitanist. But the most wonderful statement which we remember perusing since the days of Gulliver, is that "the original people of Australia are considered of the same race with the Hottentots of South Africa." This is indeed an original theory; and is nearly on the same mental level as the statement which we heard an African traveller make a few months ago in a semi-scientific audience, that the Hottentots were a mixed race produced between the Dutch and the natives of the Cape settlement. England is possibly the only country in Europe where such a statement could have been made, and we regard such exhibitions as most detrimental, not only to anthropology, but to general education, as it presupposed an amount of ignorance respecting the early colonization of the Cape Colony of which we can only find adequate precedents in the infant school. The time will shortly come when the legitimate desire of the people to give to their children scientific text-books really worth reading may be gratified, and when the teachers who disdain to impart sound elementary knowledge, on the selfish plea, illos vero indignos puto, quibus rationem reddam, will find that they no longer address an attentive, or a remunerative audience.

Geographical Primer (Chambers' Educational Course). 12mo. London and Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers.

490

Miscellanea Anthropologica.

Acts xvii, 26. A correspondent sends us the following:-I send you a list, and value, with respect to date, of the authorities for omitting and retaining daros in the text of Acts xvii, 26. Alford believes the weight of evidence to be in favour of diparos, and retains it in the

"Meyer (Dr. H. A. W.) well remarks on the omission that it is more likely to have happened owing to evoς αιματος than that αιματος

should be a gloss on evos,-for that this would be rather given by ανθρώπου.” Alford.

Ñ.B. As a rule, the Uncial, are of greater value than the Cursive MSS.

Superstitions of Nations. Mr. HALIBURTON, Vice-president of the Nova Scotia Institute, has been lecturing at Halifax, Ñ.S., on a comparison of the customs and superstitions of nations, as affording evidences of the unity of origin of the human race.

In all ages and in all countries, a sneeze is supposed to be an omen of impending evil to the person who sneezes, or to an undertaking which he may at the time be commencing, and an invocation of the Deity is requisite to protect the sneezer from the danger he incurs. Among the ancients, Homer mentions it. Aristotle fruitlessly endeavours to explain its existence; Apuleius refers to it; and Pliny has a problem on it: "Cur sternutantes salutantur." Tiberius observed it, and rigidly exacted the custom of protecting the person who sneezed, by an ejaculation to the gods. The Jewish Rabbis were equally puzzled to account for its existence among the Hebrews, who to this day exclaim "Tobim Chaim " (a long life to you) on such occasions.

But the custom is also met with in the most remote parts of Asia, among the most secluded nations of Africa, and in many tribes of the New World. De Soto, in his wanderings in Florida (which country he discovered), noticed that when a Sachem sneezed, the savages around him bowed down, and invoked the sun to save him. In Otaheite, it is the custom to invoke the protection of Heaven, when a person sneezes. Mariner relates the like of the natives of Fiji, and of the Tonga group.

Mr. Haliburton considers that these remarkable identities in the observance of so irrational a custom took their rise from the religious fears and superstitions of primitive man, the common parent of all these widely-scattered tribes; and he regards it as a strong proof of the unity of the human race. Let anthropologists answer the question, how else did all men, in all countries, arrive at the same singular conclusion, as to the mysterious dangers attendant on a sneeze, if this belief was not inherited from a common source?

Among Celtic tribes (as, for example, in the superstition of the Highlanders) the influence of the fairies is the danger to which the sneezer is exposed, and minor spirits of an analogous grade are those guarded against by the invocations of the Polynesian savage.

66

Proposed Exploration of Peru. (Extract of a letter from Professor Raimondi, Lima, 13th July, 1863, to William Bollaert, Esq., London). Accept my thanks for the trouble you have taken to translate for the society from my work on Loreto, what appertains to anthropology. The work in question is but a small specimen of the materials I am getting together for my large work on Peru, which will amount to at least twenty thick volumes, and will take up the whole of my lifetime to complete.

"Since I had the pleasure of exploring with you the province of Tarapacá in 1855, I have not ceased to wander over this interesting