Agassiz.] 304 [October 16, 



In response to an invitation by the President, Professor 

 Agassiz oifered some remarks upon the antiquitj' of man. 



He said that fifty years ago both the h^arned and nnk'arned be- 

 heved they possessed a trustworthy chronology of human history. 

 Historians struck the first blow at this assuuijition by their researches 

 into the successive dynasties which had ruled over Egypt. Their 

 lead was qvuekly followed in the different departments of science, 

 until now we are forced to cast aside the ancient beliefs, and con- 

 struct OTU" chronology from a new and independent basis. Twelve 

 3'ears ago, Ferdinand Keller of Zurich, by his examination of the 

 lake deposits of Switzerland, brought to light proofs of the existence 

 of races of men with new characters of civilization. These discov- 

 eries astonished the world, and have since given rise to a new science, 

 new societies, and new museums. Humanity is now connected with 

 geological phenomena. 



Formerly the presence of such large mammals as the Elephas primi- 

 genius, IlJiinoccros ticJio)-inus, Bos primujerdus and Ursus spelceus, was 

 considered the dividing line between geological and human history — 

 now the extensive researches of such able naturalists as Lartet, Von 

 Baer, Rutimeyer and Brandt, have proved that these quadi-upeds 

 were once contemporaneous with man. The question before us is 

 whether we can establish a successive chronology of events since the 

 appearance of these animals upon the earth. Brandt has attempted 

 to show that they were living within the historical jJcriod, and has 

 argued therefrom tliat the native cattle of Europe were developed 

 from the Bos primicjenius. The argument for their recent extinction 

 is drawn from documents hitherto partly unknown, because written in 

 the Sclavonic tongue; these represent the existence of Bos primigen- 

 ius in the forests of Lithuania and Poland, up to the eleventh and 

 thirteenth centuries. The presence of Cervus megaceros in the 

 marshes of Europe up to the fourteenth century is also made prob- 

 able. 



There is no doubt that the fauna of the diluvial dej)osits and of 

 the European caves consisted of animals, some of which, at least, had 

 a circumpolar geographical distribution, and that the southern limits 

 of animals now living in the polar regions were once nuich greater 

 than now; remains of the reindeer have been found all through 

 France to the Pyrenees and in Southern Germany. "We find that 

 these mammals had intimate relations with the ice period, and it 

 becomes necessary for us to investigate the extent of the ice-fields at 

 the time when the glacial period was at its height. Prof. Agassiz 

 believed that the changes in extent, which our ice-fields have under- 

 gone during successive periods, would furnish us with data for our 

 chronology. In America, the ice-fields, at the time of their greatest 



