252 THE EEV. J. MAGENS MELLO^ M.A., F.G.S., "ETC., 



as valley and hill tribes respectively; the latter being by 

 degrees exterminated, or absorbed, by their more civilised 

 neighbours. Nor is it possible to agree with Dr. Karl 

 Penka who in his Origines Ariacce derives the Aryan race 

 in part from the PalEeolithic men of the Magdaleuien or even 

 earlier Canstadt types. 



No, as far as actual evidence goes, the Palasolithic age of 

 man, as the Pleistocene age of geology, seems to end 

 abruptly. There is an intervening and mysterious blank, 

 then v/e pass at once, Avithout any apparent connection with 

 the previous age, as far as man at any rate is concerned, into 

 Neolithic times. "We pass from the age when man hunted tlie 

 reindeer, and contended with the mammoth and rhinoceros, 

 the lion and the hyaena, into that in which a new race of 

 men appear in this quarter of the w^orld ; men with new 

 habits and manners of life ; and when animals more familiar 

 to us than some of those earlier forms replace many of those 

 which were so numerous in the Pleistocene age ; when the 

 Arctic mammalia and their Southern contemporaries had 

 vanished, and with them the last lingering tribes of Palaeo- 

 lithic man. 



The Chairman (Professor E. Hull, LL.D., F.R.S.).— With 

 regard to the valuable paper of the Rev. Mr. Mello ; all must 

 recognise that he has evidently drawn it up with great care, and 

 with an earnest wish to place on record an exact, impartial state- 

 ment, as to what is known of the interesting and important 

 subject of the origin and early appearance of man on this globe. 

 The discussion will be appropriately commenced by reading a 

 communication which has been received. 



The Hon. Secretakv then read as follows : — 



