September i8, 1890] 



NATURE 



507 



incline of the slide is sufficient to cause the gun to run out, 

 which it does smartly, but is checked and brought to rest quietly 

 by means of a controlling ram placed at the end of the recoil 

 press. 



But I must conclude. I trust I have said enough to satisfy 

 you as to the indebtedness of the naval and military services to 

 mechanicians and to mechanical science, but you will also under- 

 stand that within the limits of an address it is impossible to 

 give a complete survey of so large a subject, and that there are 

 important fields I have left wholly untouched. 



SECTION H. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Opening Address by John Evans, D.C.L., LL.D., D.Sc, 

 Treas.R.S.,. Pres.S.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., President of 

 THE Section. 



In the year 1870 I had the honour of presiding over what was 

 then the Department of Ethnology in the Biological Section of 

 the British Association at its meeting in Liverpool. Since that 

 time' twenty years have elapsed, during the greater portion of 

 which period the subjects in which we are principally interested 

 have been discussed in a Department of Anthropology forming 

 part of the organization of the Biological Section ; although since 

 1883 there has been a new Section of the Association, that of 

 Anthropology, which has thus been placed upon the same level 

 as the various other sciences represented in this great parliament 

 of knowledge. This gradual advance in its position among 

 other branches of science proves, at all events, that, whatever 

 may have been our actual increase in knowledge, Anthropology 

 has gained and not lost in public estimation, and the interest in 

 all that relates to the history, physical characteristics, and progress 

 of the human race is even more lively and more universal than 

 it was twenty years ago. During those years much study has 

 been devoted to anthropological questions by able investigators, 

 both in England and abroad ; and there is at the present time 

 hardly any civilized country in the world in which there has not 

 been founded, under some form or another, an Anthropological 

 Society, the publications of which are yearly adding a greater or 

 less quota to our knowledge. The subjects embraced in these 

 studies are too numerous and too vast for me to attempt even in 

 a cursory manner to point out in what special departments the 

 principal advances have been made, or to what extent views that 

 were held as well established twenty years ago have had either 

 to be modified in order to place them on a surer foundation, or 

 have had to be absolutely abandoned. Nor could I undertake 

 to enumerate all the new lines of investigation which the in- 

 genuity of students has laid open, or the diflferent ways in 

 which investigations that at first sight might appear more 

 curious than useful have eventually been found to have a direct 

 bearing upon the ordinary affairs of human life, and their results 

 to be susceptible of application towards the promotion of the 

 public welfare. I may, however, in the short space of time to 

 which an opening address ought to be confined, call your atten- 

 tion to one or two subjects, both theoretical and practical, which 

 are still under discussion by anthropologists, and on which as yet 

 no general agreement has been arrived at by those who have 

 most completely gone into the questions involved. 



One of these questions is : What is the antiquity of the human 

 race, or rather what is the antiquity of the earliest objects 

 hitherto found which can with safety be assigned to the handi- 

 work of man? This question is susceptible of being entirely 

 separated from any speculations as to the genetic descent of man- 

 kind ; and, even were it satisfactorily answered to-day, new 

 facts might to-morrow come to light that would again throw 

 the question entirely open. On any view of probabilities, 

 it is in the highest degree unlikely that we shall ever discover 

 the exact cradle of our race, or be able to point to any object as 

 the first product of the industry and intelligence of man. We 

 may, however, I think, hope that from time to time fresh dis- 

 coveries may be made of objects of human art, under such 

 circumstances and conditions that we may infer with certainty 

 that at some given point in the world's history mankind existed, 

 and in sufficient numbers for the relics that attest this existence 

 to show a correspondence among themselves, even when dis- 

 covered at remote distances from each other. 



Thirty-one years ago, at the meeting of this Association at 

 Aberdeen, when Sir Charles Lyell, in the Geological Section, 



called attention to the then recent discoveries of Palaeolithic 

 implements in the Valley of the Somme, his conclusions as to 

 their antiquity were received with distrust by not a few of the 

 geologists present. Five years afterwards, in 1864, when Sir 

 Charles presided over the meeting of this Association at Bath, 

 it was not without reason that he quoted the saying of the Irish 

 orator, that "they who are born to affluence cannot easily 

 imagine how long a time it takes to get the chill of poverty out 

 of one's bones." Nor was he wrong in saying that "we of the 

 living generation, when called upon to make grants of thousands 

 of years in order to explain the events of what is called the 

 modern period, shrink naturally at first from making what seems 

 so lavish an expenditure of past time. Throughout our early 

 education we have been accustomed to such strict economy in all 

 that relates to the chronology of the earth and its inhabitants in 

 remote ages, so fettered have we been by old traditional beliefs, 

 that even when our reason is convinced, and we are persuaded 

 that we ought to make more liberal grants of time to the geo- 

 logist, we feel how hard it is to get the chill of poverty out of 

 our bones." 



And yet of late years how little have we heard of any scruples 

 in accepting as a recognized geological fact that, both on the 

 Continent of Europe and in these islands, which were then more 

 closely connected with that continent, man existed during what 

 is known as the Quaternary period, and was a contemporary of 

 the mammoth and hairy rhinoceros, and of other animals, 

 several of which are either entirely or locally extinct. It is true 

 that there are still some differences of opinion as to the exact 

 relation in time of the beds of river gravel containing the relics of 

 man and the Quaternary fauna to the period of great cold which 

 is known as the Glacial period. Some authors have regarded 

 the gravels as pre-Glacial, some as Glacial, and some as 

 post-Glacial ; but, after all, this is more a question of terms 

 than of principle. All are agreed, for instance, that in the 

 eastern counties of England implements are found in beds 

 posterior to the invasion of cold conditions in that particular 

 region, though there may be doubts as to how much later these 

 conditions may have prevailed in other parts of this country. 

 All, too, are agreed that since the deposit of the gravels con- 

 siderable changes have taken place in the configuration of the 

 surface of the country, and that the time necessary for such 

 changes must have been very great, though those in whose 

 bones the chill of poverty still clings are inclined to call in 

 influences by which the time required for the erosion of the 

 river valleys in which the gravels occur may be theoretically 

 diminished. 



On the other hand, there have been not a few who, feeling 

 that the evidence of the existence of the human race has now 

 been satisfactorily established for Quaternary times, and that 

 there is no proof that what has been found in the ordinary 

 gravels belongs to anything like the first phases of the family of 

 man, have sought to establish his existence in far earlier Tertiary 

 times. In the view that earlier relics of man than those found 

 in the river gravels may eventually be discovered, most of those 

 who have devoted special attention to the subject will, I think, 

 concur. But such an extension of time can only be granted on 

 conclusive evidence of its necessity ; and, before accepting the 

 existence of Tertiary man, the grounds on which his family-tree 

 is based require to be most carefully examined. 



Let me say a few words as to the principal instances on which 

 the believer in Tertiary man relies. These may be classified 

 under three heads ^ : (i) the presumed discovery of parts of the 

 human skeleton ; (2) that of animal bones said to have been cut 

 and worked by the hand of man ; and (3) that of flints thought 

 to be artificially fashioned. 



On most of these I have already commented elsewhere.* 

 Under the first head I may mention the skull discovered by 

 Prof. Cocchi at Olmo, near Arezzo, with which, however, dis- 

 tinctly Neolithic implements were associated ; the skeletons 

 found at Castelnedolo, of which I need only say that M. Sergi, 

 who described the discovery, regarded them as the remains of a 

 family party who had suffered shipwreck in Pliocene times ; and 

 the fossil man of Denise, in the Auvergne, mentioned by Sir 

 Charles Lyell, who may have been buried in more recent times 

 under lava of Pliocene date. On these discoveries no superstructure 

 can be built. The Calaveras skull seems to have better claims 



' See A. Arcelin, *'L' Homme Tertiaire," Paris, ao rue dc la Chaise, 

 1889. 



2 Trans. Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc, vol. i. p. 145; "Address to the Anthrop. 

 Inst., 1883," Anth. Joum., vol. xii. p. 565. 



NO. 1090, VOL. 42] 



