220 NATURAL SCIENCE [October 



Canadian geology — treated by Dr George M. Dawson in his admir- 

 able address to Section C at Toronto. Sir John Evans' address as 

 President of the British Association, however, is one to interest 

 even the least scientific of the general public. It is a valuable 

 expression of opinion of one of the foremost minds upon the 

 question of the Antiquity of Man, and recent attempts in Europe 

 to carry the human period backwards much further than the 

 Palaeolithic gravels. As might be expected, Sir John Evans' 

 opinions are conservative. The engraved Pliocene shell, Pcctunculus, 

 is dismissed with ridicule. For the asserted Indian Miocene man 

 he accepts the explanation ably advanced in Natural Science by Mr 

 R D. Oldham ; the form of the fractured flints of the Cromer 

 Forest Bed he attributes to natural fractures ; he wishes for more 

 evidence as to the age of the beds which yielded Pithecanthropus 

 erectus, and the claims advanced in favour of ' Eolithic ' man from 

 the high level gravels near Sevenoaks, he considers, as he did in 

 1890, to be still unproved. In all these points we regard Sir 

 John Evans' scepticism as healthy ; and as he is unquestionably 

 one of the best living authorities on stone implements, his opinion 

 must carry great weight. The asserted pre-Glacial man of East 

 Anglia, based on implements supposed to have been found beneath 

 the glacial deposits, the recent excavations by Mr Clement Eeid 

 seem to have conclusively disproved. And in the other cases 

 referred to the evidence is either wholly discredited or still 

 inconclusive. 



The most remarkable expression of opinion called forth by 

 this learned and calmly scientific exposition of the facts was an 

 astounding leading article in The Times. Most of the scientific 

 members of the staff of that paper seem to have gone to 

 Canada, and the reactionary journalists apparently resolved to 

 make the most of their opportunity. Accordingly, we read con- 

 cerning archaeology, in the first leading article of August 19th, 

 that — 



" All its speculations upon neolithic and palaeolithic man are 

 founded upon a single observation, as yet completely unrelated, save 

 by the loosest conjecture, with any other portion of human know- 

 ledge. That observation is that flints, chipped or polished in a 

 manner for which natural agencies do not seem to account, have 

 been found in certain deposits at widely-separated points on the 

 surface of the globe. That they were chipped by man as we know 

 him is a mere conjecture. How they came to be so widely dis- 

 tributed is a question that baffles even the licence of surmise. 

 Geology does not attempt to fix within a thousand centuries the 

 age of the beds in which they are found ; and geological specula- 

 tions themselves rest upon assumptions which may be plausible 



