PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 5 
the old Counts Palatine, many fragments of architectural 
interest, among others the fine, though mutilated chapel, built 
by Bishop Beck, and in Newcastle and other places we find here 
and there examples of the houses of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries. In Seaton Delaval, where is also, closely adjoin- 
ing the house, a small early chapel, we have a noble example of 
the artistic skill of Vanbrugh, the greatest architectural genius 
who adorned the eighteenth century. 
All these are within our reach, and cannot fail to give 
an additional zest to our meetings, whilst we are led to 
admire therein the skill and science of our forefathers, and by 
considering their interior domestic arrangements, and ex- 
terior capabilities for defence, we are enabled to obtain some 
insight into the social habits and manners of the people who 
lived in them, and to judge of the relations in which they lived 
with their neighbours on both sides of the Tweed. 
But to go back to a period incalculably earlier than any to 
which I have already referred, to show how intimately arche- 
ology and the natural sciences are connected, I need only draw 
your attention to the question which is now causing so much 
discussion,—that of the antiquity of man upon the earth. The 
most curious discoveries of flint implements, of human manu- 
facture, in the drift, associated with remains of animals which 
have not existed within historic times, has led to much contro- 
versy, but as yet the facts are too scanty to allow any decided 
conclusion to be arrived at. Of one thing there can be no doubt, 
that the implements in question are of man’s handywork; anyone 
who has seen them might as well say that the steel pen he 
writes with was accidental, as that these remarkable relics are 
formed by natural fracture and cleavage. Nor indeed can I see 
any ground for a denial of the fact, that the animals, whose 
remains are found in the drift, and the people who produced the 
flint implements were cowval. It does not appear on most careful 
examination,. by competent and various geologists, that the 
deposit in which they are found is a secondary one, caused by the 
breaking up of two distinct strata, each of which had its several 
‘and separate remains, or, as it has been asserted, that the flint 
implements have worked down to the lower stratum in which 
