ORDINARY MEETING.* 



The Proceedings of the previous Meeting having been read and 

 ap23roved, 



The following paper was read by the author : — 



PRIMITIVE MAN: 1. HIS TIMES AND HIS COM- 

 PANIONS. A Sketch by the Rev. J. Magens Mello, 

 M.A., F.G.S., &c. 



IF the hidden secrets of the future, into which we so often 

 seek to pry, fascinate our imagination, there is also a 

 fascination, but Httle less great, in that dim past of the world's 

 history, a few chapters of which we are just beginning to 

 read, as little by little its blurred monuments and half-effaced 

 inscriptions are disinterred, and scrutinized in the hght of 

 science. 



Of these records of the past there are few of greater 

 interest than those which relate to our own race, and to those 

 early days when man first appeared as an actor upon the 

 world's stage. 



The history of those long ages when the earth was being 

 gradually prepared for man's reception, the successive 

 appearance and disappearance of innumerable forms of 

 organized existence, the slow changes and the violent con- 

 vulsions by which the earth has been fashioned, have a 

 wonderful interest of their own, but after all, " Homo sum ! " 

 we exclaim, and it is man's history that most attracts us. 



By sloAv degrees we have got to know something at any 

 rate of the conditions, surroundings, habits, and possibly even 



* The speeches made, and numerous communications received, in 

 regard to the two divisions of this subject, liave been most fully and 

 carefully revised by the respective authors, and were submitted in a 

 perfect state to the author, November, 1897, for his replies. 



