Academy of Science. 17 



studies the question of fossil man. From man in the present 'period of creation' 

 we have descended to the quaternary period, where, asCuvier maintained with the 

 greatest confidence, man never existed at all. Nowada^'S, quaternary man is a gen- 

 erally accepted fact ; is no longer a problem, but a real doctrine. But tertiary man 

 is a problem — of course a problem which is already in a stage of material discus- 

 sion. There are objects already about which discussions are going on as to whether 

 they may be admitted as proofs for the existence of man in the tertiary period. 



* * Even men who, like Abbe Bourgeois, are decided ecclesiastics, are convinced 

 that man has lived during the tertiary period ; for them tertiary man is already a 

 doctrine. For us, who are of a more critical nature, tertiary man is a problem, 

 but, as we must acknowledge, a problem worthy of discussion. Let us, therefore, 

 for the pre-ent, remain at quaternary man, whom we really do find. * * It may 

 indeed be that tertiary man has existed in Greenland or Demaria, and will again 

 be brought to light from under the ground somewhere or other." 



At the last meeting of the British Association, Dublin, August, 1878, Prof. John 

 Evans, in his address before the Geological section, said: " One of the questions 

 which has of late occupied geologists, is the age to be assigned to the implement- 

 bearing beds of the paleolithic age in England. Dr. James Geikie has said that for 

 the most part they belong to an inter-glacial episode towards the close of the 

 glacial period, and regards it as certain that no paleolithic bed can be shown to 

 belong to a more recent date than the mild area that preceded the last great sub- 

 mergence. His follower, Mr. Skertchly, records the finding of paleolithic imple- 

 ments in no less tlian three inter-glacial beds, each underlying boulder clays of 

 different ages and somewhat different characters — the Hessle, the purple, and the 

 chalky boulder clay. * * I have always maintained the probability of evidence 

 being found of the existence of man at an earlier period than that of the post- 

 glacial or quaternary river gravels. * * In the present state of our knowledge, 

 I do not feel confident that the evidence has arrived at a satisfactory stage of cer- 

 tainty." Before the Biological section. Prof. Huxley delivered a short address, in 

 which he referred to the question of the antiquity of man as follows: "Great 

 progress has been made in the last ten years in the direction of the discovery of 

 man in a fossil state. My memory goes back to the time when anybody who 

 broached the notion of the existence of fossil man would have been laughed at. 

 It was held to be a canon of paleontology, that man could not exist in a fossil state. 



* * But it is now beyond all question that man — an intelligent man — existed at 

 times when the whole pliysical conformation of the country was totally different 

 from that which characterizes it now. Whether the evidence we now possess jus- 

 tifies us in going back further, or not — that we can get back as far as the epoch of the 

 drift is, I think, beyond any rational question or doubt; that may be regarded as 

 something settled — but when it comes to a question as to the evidence of tracing 

 back man further than that — and recollect, the drift is only the scum of the earth's 

 surface — I must confess that to my mind the evidence is of a very dubious 

 character." 



