1 70 Prehistoric and Savage Man 



it is, but how it becomes what it is, and what are its essential 

 powers and capacities. No plant is well known to us unless 

 we know not only its foHage and flower but its very germ, 

 the modes and conditions of its development, the good effects 

 which cultivation may produce, and the deformities and 

 diseases which adverse circumstances may occasion. 



Applying this consideration to ourselves, the great import- 

 ance of the sciences which this exhibition is intended to 

 illustrate becomes manifest. 



And now let me congratulate you on the exhibition itself 

 — on the happy results obtained by those gentlemen to 

 whose exertions our presence here is due. In the rooms 

 opposite to us are specimens of human industry from the 

 most diverse races and the most varied climes, illustrating 

 the different degrees of more or less striking imperfection in 

 which our fellow-men now exist. We have specimens of 

 their pottery, their textile fabrics, their musical instruments, 

 their weapons, and the objects of their worship or super- 

 stitious reverence — specimens collected, some from races still 

 numerous, but others specially interesting as belonging to 

 tribes rapidly diminishing in number and destined too soon 

 to be lost to us for ever. Moreover, besides these illustra- 

 tions of the world as it is, you have also a most valuable 

 collection of objects which may carry us back in imagination 

 to an epoch so distant that of its antiquity we have as yet no 

 approximatively accurate measures in years. 



This fine collection, the greatest and best, I beHeve, which 

 has ever been made in this country out of London, is a just 

 subject of congratulation, and I regret that the modesty oi 

 the gentlemen who have exerted themselves to get it together 

 forbids me to mention their names. There is one name, 

 however, which I will mention, the name of a venerable 

 gentleman whose public spirit is well known and universally 

 esteemed in Liverpool. I mean Mr. Mayer, to whose zeal 



