122 BjspoRT — 1856. 



its cover and the light. I have discovered in this passage precisely similar arrow- 

 heads to those which I detected in an urn from a barrow presented to me by 

 the Rev. Mr. Welland. With the exception of the boar-spear and a blade of the 

 same metal found not far from it very much rusted, all the articles in the mould, or 

 in the disturbed soil, consisted of flint, chert, syenite, and bone, — such primitive 

 substances as have been in all countries, and down to the present, used by the savage 

 for the fabrication of his weapons, whether for the chase or battle. At a still greater 

 depth, near the common entrance, in the passage, lay extended, lengthwise, in the 

 ordinary position of burial, the remains of a human skeleton, much decayed ; — two 

 portions only of the jaw and some single teeth, with the mouldering vertebrae and 

 ribs, were all that remained. As in the case of the flint-knife mass, already described, 

 there adhered to the jaw portions of the soil on which it lay, and of the stalagmite 

 which partly covered it. The teeth were so worn down that the flat crowns of the 

 incisors might be mistaken for molars, — indicating the advanced age of the individual. 

 M. Cuvier, to whom I submitted the fragments, in 1831, was struck with the form of 

 the jaw. He pronounced it to belong to the Caucasian race : he promised to bestow 

 particular notice on it, but death, unhappily for science, put a stop to his glorious 

 labours. AH the specimens, together with a collection of fossil bones, — the third I 

 had presented to the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, — I transmitted to him 

 before I quitted the Continent, and may be found among his effects. The skeleton 

 lay about a foot and a half below the surface ; from the tumbled state of the earth, 

 the admixture of flags of stalagmite, added to the presence of flint articles and pieces 

 of slate, it was manifest that the floor had been dug up for the reception of the body, 

 and that it was again covered over with the materials thrown up from the excavation. 

 The earthy covering consisted of the red soil, containing fossil bones mixed up with 

 recent mould ; the mound of earth outside the mouth, at the right hand, was thrown 

 up from the passage to render it more accessible. It was precisely that which 

 covered the human skeleton and contained the admixture of human and fossil relics. 

 Previous to the disturbance of the floor for the admission, of the bod}', it would 

 appear, from the presence of flags of stalagmite in the rubble, that it was covered 

 by a continuous crust, — the edges indeed of which still adhere to the sides. It 

 further appears from the repetition of similar crusts, as indicated by the broken 

 edges at the sides, that there were periods of repose which allowed new floors to 

 form, marking clearly their repeated destruction and renovation at intervals of time. 

 With the exception of single teeth and an occasional rib or vertebra in charcoal, 

 ■which may have possibly belonged to the same subject, there were no other traces 

 of human remains." 



Further extracts from this manuscript will be found in the Geological Section, p. 78. 



STATISTICS. 



Opening Address by Lord Stanley, M.P., President of the Section. 



I BELIEVE it will be my duty to open the proceedings of this Section by a few words 

 relative to the purpose of our meeting ; and I must begin by observing, that the 

 remarks which follow were prepared before the passing of that resolution of yester- 

 day, which has enlarged the scope of our duties so as to include, in addition to 

 Statistics, properly so called. Economic Science in general. 



It is needless in this presence to define, at any length, the nature or the object of 

 statistical science. The axiom on which that science is based may be stated thus : 

 that the laws by which nature is governed, and more especially those laws which 

 operate on the moral and physical condition of the human race, are constant, and 

 are, in all cases, best discoverable — in some cases only discoverable — by the investi- 

 gation and comparison of phsenomena extending over a very large number of 



