perature and rain-fall, abstracted from the Report, and stated 

 that, during the recent severe cold, his minimum thermometer 

 on the morning of January 29th marked 23° below zero. 



Mr. W. T. Harris said he was gratified to hear the remarks of 

 the Corresponding Secretary on the subject of the geological 

 proofs of the antiquity of man. To the geological discussion of 

 the antiquity of man we owed the great scientific contributions 

 of the present day on the subject of Anthropology. It was that 

 which had cleared the way for the study of anthropology or the 

 natural history of man. The study of primitive man, as it is now 

 carried on, adds every day to our knowledge facts of the greatest 

 importance in determining the laws of psychological growth and 

 development. He spoke from the stand-point of an educator. He 

 supposed the physician feels inore especial interest in the facts 

 and discoveries of science relating to physiology and the sources of 

 health and disease. The interesting phase to him was more espe- 

 cially that which throws light upon "primitive culture" ; and with 

 the labors of such men as Lubbock, Milne-Edwards, Lartet, and 

 Tylor, we are recovering one by one the lost threads that belong 

 to those epochs of human history that antedate all written records. 

 What histories our future historians will be able to write when 

 natural science has once unfolded the law of sequence in the pro- 

 gress of human invention ! — the discovery of the art of metallur- 

 gy, of the use of wheels and of taming animals ! — the arts of using 

 fire, of grinding grain and making bread, and of weaving ! — each 

 one of these arts marking an epoch in the growth of the race. 

 When shown in their real sequence and in their correspondence 

 to the unfolding of the spiritual faculties of men, they will throw 

 a flood of light on the periods covered by written history, and 

 more especially upon the science of pedagogy, which has for its 

 province the elevation of the human being out of the stage of 

 infancy — that age corresponding to unconscious, pre-historic, pri- 

 mitive culture — into an active participation in modern culture 

 and civilization. Before the mind could be prepared for the sci- 

 entific spirit that is necessary in the investigation of the natural 

 history of mankind, there was necessary a fifty years' contest be- 

 tween geologists and theologians in regard to the meaning and 

 significance of facts and of revelations. Out of this contest has 

 resulted a great purification of scientific method — the utmost care 



