president's address SECTION E. 127 



at a depth of 153ft. in the auriferous gravels of California, with 

 remains of the mastodon, and covered by five or six beds of lava, 

 or A'olcanic ashes ; the fossil man of Denise. in the Auvergne, 

 mentioned by Sir Charles Lyell : neolithic implements foimd with 

 the skull discovered by Professor Cocchi, at Olmo, near Arezzo, 

 and many other like discoveries, have combined to shatter all the 

 old systems of chronology, and to put back the appearance of man 

 on the globe to the tertiary period of its development. 



In the valley of the Nile fragments of pottery have been brought 

 up from depths indicating an antiquity of at least 11,000 years, 

 while other remains are conjectured to have belonged to an epoch 

 separated from our own by an interval of not less than 26,000 years. 



That man was the contemporary of many extinct animals, at a 

 time when the configuration of land and sea and the conditions of 

 climate were wholly difi^erent from the present state, there can be 

 no doubt ; and modern research has done much to show how our 

 race has been advancing towards its condition of to-day during a 

 series of ages, for the extent of which a geological rather than an 

 historical standard of reckoning is required. 



The facts thus brought to light have, in recent years, given a 

 different direction to opinion as to the manner in which the great 

 groups of mankind have become distributed over the areas w^here 

 they are now found ; and difficulties once considered insuperable 

 are easily overcome, when regarded in connection with the now 

 ascertained extreme antiquity of the human race and those great 

 alterations of the outlines of land and sea which are shown to have 

 been going on up to the very latest geological periods. 



\\Tiat were the stages through which primaeval man passed in 

 acquiring his present place in the advancing front of li\dug 

 creatures will probably never be more than a matter of specula- 

 tion. The progress of the human race towards civilisation has 

 been controlled in all directions by the features and conditions of 

 the earth's surface. The climate, temperature and moisture, suc- 

 cession of seasons, length of day and night, have gone far in 

 determining the physical characteristics, the bodily strength, and 

 the duration of life in various races, and as less direct consequences 

 and under the greater or smaller need for the exercise of fore- 

 thought in providing against vicissitudes of existence, have been 

 developed their several capacities, social and intellectual, their 

 numbers, wealth, and power. . 



With all his arts man remain^ubject to the irresistible power 

 of terrestrial conditions and geogi^hical influences. History tells 

 us how, under the influence of causes that can be traced back to 

 the material earth, the destinies of our race have been determined, 

 nations have been born, have grown, have flourished, and have 

 perished; for whether we call it mother-country or fatherland the 

 soil under our feet, as in the Greek fable, is the true source from 

 which we draw our bodily, mental, and social strength, A know- 



