30 MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
had been invented, and the principles of life, whether in their structural 
or functional aspects, have, for the most part, been discovered within the 
lifetime of many of us here, and the knowledge of them is not vet re- 
cognized as a branch of a liberal education. 
" You have all read of uncivilized races, who regard every month's 
moon as a new creation of their gods ; who, they say, eat up the old 
moons, not for their sustenance, but for their glory, and to prove to 
mortals that they can make new ones ; and they regard your denial 
that their gods do monthly make new moons as ecpnvalent to denying 
that they could do so if they would. 
" It is not long since it was heldby most scientific men, and is so by 
some still, that species of plants and animals were (like the savages' 
moons) created in as many spots, and in as great numbers as they 
were first found in at their native places. To deny that species were 
thus created was, in many persons' opinion, regarded as equivalent to 
denying that they could be so created. 
"And I have twice been present at the annual gatherings of tribes in 
such a state of advancement as the above, but after they had come into 
contact with the missionaries of the most enlightened' nation of man- 
kind. These missionaries attempted to teach them, amongst other 
matters, the true theory of the moon's motions ; and at the first of 
these gatherings, when the subject was described by them, the presiding 
Sachem shook his head and his spear. The priests first attacked the 
new doctrine, and with fury; their temples were ornamented with 
symbols of the old creed ; and their religious chants and rites were 
worded and arranged in accordance with it. The ' medicine men,' 
however, being divided amongst themselves (as medicine men are apt 
to be in all countries), some of them sided with the missionaries, many 
from spite to the priests, but a few, I could see, from conviction ; and, 
putting my trust in the latter, I, for one, never doubted what the upshot 
would be. 
" Upwards of six years elapsed before I again visited that country, 
and was present at another annual gathering of the same tribes ; and* I 
then found the presiding Sachem treating the missionaries' theory of 
the moon's motions as an accepted fact, and the people applauding his 
avowal of the new creed. 
" Do you ask me what tribes these were, and where their annual ga- 
therings were held, and when ? I u ill tell you. The first was in 
