SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 55 



found with the human bones were probably meant for the use of the 

 departed spirit on its long journey, and thus we see that in the dim 

 and distant past, long before the days of Moses or Noah, religion formed 

 no small part of the thoughts of ancient man, however gross, rude and 

 superstitious it may have been. 



These are some of the ways in which the length of man's exist- 

 ence on earth has been estimated. It is quite impossible to make 

 definite statements on the question, because we are dealing with a 

 science which is as yet in its youth, and of which not enough is yet 

 understood to enable one to speak with any certainty whatever. 

 However I trust that from the foregoing you may have been able to 

 form some conception of the Antiquity of Man, though when one's 

 mind wanders away into thousands of years it is hard to grasp the 

 exact significance of the terms used to express such periods of time. 

 But if it is so difficult to realise the antiquity of man when at most 

 we can only calculate back to the post-pliocene and glacial epochs, 

 how much harder a task is it to gain even a faint glimmering of 

 conception of the antiquity of this world we call Earth, when we 

 think of the dozen or more layers of the stratified rocks laid down 

 before those periods, involving incalculable numbers of years, to say 

 nothing of the ages required for the consolidation of the igneous 

 rocks. To take a proportion in illustration : man's antiquity is to 

 earth's antiquity as one minute is to five years, and this is probably 

 far too large a proportion on man's side. 



ORDINARY MEETING. 

 21sT FEBRUARY, 1903. 



Professor R. W. REID, M.D., F.R.C.S., President, 

 in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the last meeting were read and approved. 

 Mr. James Adams, M.A., read a paper on the characteristics of 

 five Wa Kamba skulls presented to the Anatomical Museum by Mr. 



