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Fuego, or Australia. What, then, could we expect to be the condition of 
these far-distant people ? After mentioning instances that had lately come 
under his notice in the East End of London of utter degradation of men 
‘who had moved in better spheres, Mr. Dent alluded to the way in which 
North and South America had originally received some of its aborigines by 
streams from the Turanian race to the North, and from South-east Asia to 
the South. 
A Memper said we might regard primeval man as a child in mental 
development, and unacquainted with the arts and sciences ; but that was a 
very different thing from his being morally a degraded savage. 
Mr. R. W. Dispin had listened with great pleasure to Mr. Hassell, who 
had treated the subject with so much lucidity. With regard to degradation, 
Mr. Hassell has mentioned the New Zealanders, and said, that up to the time 
of Captain Cook no improvement had been noticed in the native races. A 
very interesting paper in reference to the Lake region of New Zealand had 
recently been read at the Geographical Society, and it stated that, so far 
from the races having improved, there bad been a considerable process: 
of degradation, and that it was now a difficult thing to find the original 
noble savage alluded to by Captain Cook: they found his degenerated 
descendants, but these were by no means specimens of men who were 
improving or who seemed to be rising in the scale. They had gone down 
physically and also morally. It appeared, however, that this deterioration 
seemed to be almost entirely confined to the males. 
Mr. W. P. James, F.L.S.—As to the great antiquity of the human race, 
when they saw how fast nations developed, and how swiftly Greece ran 
through her brilliant. career, & priori, it seemed difficult she could have risen 
so fast, as we knew she did, when the greatness of Athens was confined to 
seventy years. He thought Mr. Hassell could safely say that the records of 
history might be brought within the 5,700 years. The whole question was, to 
his mind, most fascinating. 
Captain Francis Perris, F.G.S.,said a scientific writer outside the Institute 
had held that the Author had no possible scientific evidence to go upon in 
taking up the question of the condition of primeval man. In making such a 
remark this writer, an admirer of Dr. Darwin, had forgotten that the 
question was raised by that eminent man, who, in many a page of the last 
edition of his Descent of Man, professed to give a full description of the 
manners, and customs, and domestic life of “ primeval man.” 
Mr. HAssELL, in reply, thanked the Members present for the attention 
they had paid to his paper. He wished it to be distinctly understood that, 
while he did not agree with those who claimed countless thousands of 
years as the human period, he did not argue for the 4,004 years of 
Archbishop Usher as representing that period. Indeed, considering our 
present limited knowledge, he did not think a date could be properly 
assigned to the first chapter of the book of Genesis. As to the word 
“savage,” he had used that word in the sense of wild, brutal, uncivilised, 
a dweller in the woods, and, with this definition of the word, he asked 
