LETTER FROM CHEV. W. JERVIS, F.G.S. 283 



kingdom equivalent to mind. Yet I almost fancy that Mr. Whid- 

 borne concedes far too much to evolutionists. There is an 

 immense difference between a noble mastiff and an Italian grey- 

 hound, yet no naturalists even dreamt o£ giving them two specific 

 names ; the same of man himself in the case of the negro and the 

 Caucasian. 1. In both these instances the descendants are prolific ; 

 but man, in his unnatural desire to improve upon creation, is 

 powerless to obtain a prolific mule by evolution forced upon indi- 

 viduals belonging to kindred but distinct species. 



" I see that Dr. Walker, in connection with a paper on Art in 

 Australia* declares that man, as he came forth from the hand of his 

 Creator, had he been a savage, he did not think he could have got 

 any further, but that he thought the essence of humanity of the 

 best type was in him, though his higher powers and the actual 

 thoughts of his mind would be, naturally, developed at a later 

 stage. Such I firmly believe to have been so. Many years ago I 

 described Adam to have been a gentleman, and in my lecture On 

 the Creation as having, through his intimate converse with God,, 

 and his pristine exemption from imperfection, a mind superior to 

 Newton, Galileo, or Laplace. 



"What of our present knowledge of the ethnographical and 

 archaeological records ? The opening rolls which are the most 

 important on account of their high antiquity, have never come to 

 light. In comparison, I consider the geological records to be even 

 better known to us. 



"After reading the paper on Eolithic Implements, my confidence 

 was especially shaken by seeing that the so-called Eolithic works 

 of man Avere invariably obtained from excavations made in a line 

 of gi'avel pits. Apart from the presumed antiquity, I should 

 desire to learn some plausible explanation of such strange circum- 

 stance. How could man's work become buried in the very place 

 whence he obtained the materials for making it with supposed 

 care and trouble ? What carelessness ! Again : Since such great 

 numbers of such implements have been collected, would it not go to 

 prove the existence of an immense population, accurately peopling 

 a given geological zone, but of which we never found a single trace 

 of another kind, nor even these objects in other parts ? Major 

 Angelucci showed me a most extensive collection of flints which 



* E. W. Mathews, " Pictorial Art in Australia," vol. xxxiii, 308. 



