150 JOHN" EVANS — OX TEETIAET MATf. 



must for the present recommend you to return the Scotch verdict 

 of "not proven." At the same time, there is no reason whatever 

 why man should not have been Pre-glacial, and the view of Pro- 

 fessor Dawkins that during the deposit of the river-gravels of tlie 

 south of Britain the northern part of this country was exposed to 

 the action of glaciers may prove to be well founded. Although 

 I am unable to accept the evidence of man having existed in the 

 Pliocene period, it must not for a moment be forgotten that among 

 all those who have paid any attention to this subject, there is an 

 absolute conviction of the great antiquity of the human race. 

 Even in this country man was living when the rivers were flowing 

 80 or 90 feet above their present level, before the channel between 

 England and France was cut, and at a time when St. Alban's 

 Head was continuous land with the Isle of Wight. Such facts 

 give us some idea of the antiquity of Quaternary man. The 

 fauna of that period was not essentially diiferent from that of the 

 present, and of the animals some are extinct, and some have 

 migrated to other lands. But to say that man existed in the 

 Pliocene period is very different. There is only one of the higher 

 animals — the hippopotamus — that has survived from that period. 

 And Avhen we come to Miocene times, it is stranger still if such a 

 being as man existed. 



In the presence of our learned President, I will not express my 

 views upon the doctrine of evolution, but will only say that from 

 some cause or other certain changes have in the course of time 

 taken place in the forms of animals. At the time when these 

 implements are supposed to have been made, the horse was re- 

 presented by the hipparion, which had on each foot two separate 

 toes besides the central hoof. The mastodon was thriving, and 

 there was living a series of animals, vastly dilfering in various 

 characteristics from those of the present day, but still sufficiently 

 allied to them to suggest the highest probability of their being 

 ancestral forms. These facts afford a veiy strong argument against 

 man alone remaining unchanged amongst all these other changes ; 

 but, whatever view may be held with regard to the question of the 

 existence of man in these remote ages, it must not be imagined 

 that it is in any way proved that Palajolithic man was the first 

 human being that existed. We must be prepared to wait, how- 

 ever, for further and better authenticated discoveries before carry- 

 ing his existence back in time further than the Pleistocene or Post- 

 Tertiary period. 



