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jy.4 TURE 



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valley of ihe Somme, supported as they are by the researclies of 

 many Continental naturalists, and in our own country of MacEnery 

 and Godwin-Austen, Prestwich and Lyell, Vivian and Pengelly, 

 Christy, Evans, and many more, have proved that Man formed a 

 humble part of this strange assembly. 



Nay, even at this early period there were at least two distinct 

 races of men in Europe ; one of them — as Boyd Dawkins has 

 pointed out — closely resembling the modern Esquimaux in form, 

 in his weapons and implement-;, probably in his clothing, 

 as well as in so many of the animals with which he was 

 as-iociated. 



At this stage Man appears to have been ignorant of pottery, to 

 have had no knowledge of agriculture, no domestic animals, 

 exce;)t perhaps the dog. His weapons were the axe, the spear, 

 and the javelin ; I do not believe he knew the u;e of the bow, 

 Ihiuo'h he was probably acquainted with the lance. He was, of 

 course, ignorant of metal, and his stone implements, though 

 skilfully formed, were of quite different shapes from those of the 

 second .Stone age, and were never ground. This earlier Stone 

 period, when man co-existed with these extinct mammalia, is 

 known as the Palaeolithic, or Early Stone Age, in opposition to 

 the Neiliihic, or Neiver Stone Age. 



The remains of the mammalia which coexisted with Man in 

 ])re-historic limes have been most carefully studied by Owen, 

 Lartet, Rutimeyer, Falconer, Bus':, E .y I Dawkins, and others. 

 The presence of the mammoth, the reindeer, and e-pecially of the 

 musk-ox, indicate? a severe, not to say an arctic, climate, the 

 existence of which, moreover, was proved by other considerations ; 

 while, on the contrary, the hippopotamus requires considerable 

 warmth. How then is this association to be explained ? 



While the climate of the globe is, no doubt, much affected by 

 geographical condition^ the cold of the glacial p;riod was, I 

 believe, mainly due to the excentricity of the earth's orbit, com- 

 bined with the obliquity of the ecliptic. The result of the latter 

 condiiion is a period of 21,000 years, during one half of v\hich 

 the northern hemisphere is warmer than the southern, waile 

 during the other 10,500 years the reverse is the case. At present 

 we are in the former pha e, and there is, we. know, a vast accu- 

 mulation of ice at the south pole. But when the earth's orbit is 

 nearly circular, as it is at present, the difference between the two 

 hemispheres is not very great ; on the c nitrary, as the excentricity 

 of the orbit increases ihe contrast between them increases also. This 

 excentricity is continuUly oscillating within certain limits, which 

 CroU and subsequently Stone have calculated out for the last 

 million years. At present the excentricity is -016 and the mean 

 temperature of the c jldest month in London is about 40°. Such 

 has been the state of things for nearly 100,000 years ; but before 

 that there was a period, begi ming 300,000 years ago, when the 

 excentricity of the orbit varied from '26 to "57. The result of 

 this would be greatly to increase the effect due to the obliquity 

 of the orbit ; at certain periods the climate would be much 

 warmer than at present, while at others the number of days in 

 winter would be twenty m^.re, and of summer twenty less than 

 now, while the mean temperature of the coldest month would be 

 lowered 20°. We thus get something like a date for the last 

 glacial epoch, and we see that it was not simply a period of cold, 

 but rather one of extremes each beat of the pendulum of tem- 

 ]ierature lasting for no less than 21,000 years. This explains the 

 fact that, as Morlot showed in 1854, the glacial deposits of 

 Switzerland, and, as we now know, those of Scotland, are not 

 a single u.iiform layer, but a succes iun of strata indicating very 

 different condition';. I agree also with Croll and Geikie in 

 thinking that these considerations explain the apparent anomaly 

 of the CO existence in the same gravels of arctic and tropical 

 aiiiiuals; the former having lived in the cold, while the latter 

 flourished in the hot, periods. 



It is, I think, now well established that man inhabited Europe 

 during the milder periods of the glacial epoch. Some high 

 authorities indeed consider that we have evidence of his presence 

 in pre-glacial and even in Miocene times, but I confess that I am 

 not satisfied on this point. Even the more recent period carries 

 back the record of man's existence to a distance so great as 

 altogether t > change our views of ancient history. 



Nor is it only as regards the antiquity and material condition 

 of man in prehistoric times that great progress has been made. 

 If time permitted I should have been glad to have dwelt on the 

 origin and development of language, of custom, and of law. On 

 all of these the ci mpari'on of the various lower races still in- 

 haViiting so large a portion of the earth's surface, has thrown 

 much light ; vvhile even in the most cultivated nations we fiid 



survivals, curious fancies, and lingering ideas ; the fossil remains 

 as it were of former cutom; and religions embedded in our 

 modern civilisation, like the relics of extinct animals in the crust 

 of the earth. 



In Geology the formation of our Association coincided with the 

 appearance of Lyell's " Principles of Geology," the first volume 

 of which was published in 1830, and the second in 1832. At 

 that time the received opinion was that the phenomena of 

 Geology could only be explained by violent periodical con- 

 vulsions, and a high intensity of terrestrial energy culminating 

 in repeated catastrophes. Hutton and Playfair had indeed 

 maintained that such causes as those now in operation would, 

 if only lime enough were allowed, account for the geological 

 structure of Ihe earth ; nevertheless the opposite view generally 

 prevailed, until Lyell, with rare sagacity and great eloquence, 

 with a wealth of illustration and most powerful reasoning, con- 

 vinced geologists that the forces now in action are powerful 

 enough, if only time be given, to produce results quite as 

 stupendous as those which science records. 



As regards Stratigraphical Geology, at the time of the first 

 meeting of the British A-sociation at York, the strata between 

 the Carboniferous Limestone and the Chalk had been mainly 

 reduced to order and classified, chiefly through the labours of 

 William Smith. But the cl issification of all the strata lying 

 above the Chalk and below the Carboniferous Limestone respec- 

 tively, remained in a state of the greatest confusion. The year 

 1 83 1 marks the period of the commencement of the joint labours 

 of Sedgwick and Mnrchison, which resulted in the establishment 

 of the Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian systems. Our pre- 

 Cambrian strata have recently been'divided by Hicks into four 

 great groups of immense thicknes?, and implying, therefore, a 

 great lapse of time ; but no fossils have yet been discovered in 

 them. Lyell's cla^-sification of the Tertiary deposits, the result 

 of the studies which he carried on with the assistance of Deshayes 

 and others, was published in the third volume of the " Principles 

 of Geology" in 1833. The establishment of Lyell's divi-ions of 

 Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, was the starting-point of a most 

 impirtant series of investigations by Prestwich and others of 

 these younger deposits; as well as of the post- Tertiary, Quaternary, 

 or drift beds, which are of special interest from the light they 

 have thrown on the early history of Man. 



As regards the physical character of the earth, two theories 

 have been held : one, that of a fluid interior covered by a thin 

 crust ; the other, of a practically solid sphere. The former is 

 now very generally admitted, both by astronomers and geologists, 

 to be untenable. The prevailing feeling of geologists on 

 this subject has been well expressed by Prof. Le Conte, who 

 says, " the whole theory of igneous agencies — which is little less 

 than the whole foundation of theoretic geology — must be recon- 

 structed on the basis of a solid earth." 



In 1837 Agassiz startled the scientific world by his " Discours 

 sur I'ancienne extension des G aciers," in which, developing the 

 observation already made by Charpentier and Venetz, that 

 boulders had been transported to great distances, and that rocks 

 far away from, or high above, existing glaciers, are polished and 

 scratched by the action of ice, he boldly asserted the existence ol 

 a "glacial period," during which Switzerland and Ihe North of 

 Europe were subjected to great cold and buried under a vast 

 sheet of ice. 



The ancient poets described certain gifted mortals as privileged 

 to descend into the interior of the earth, and have exercised 

 their imagination in recounting the wonders there revealed. As 

 in other cases, however, the realities of science have proved more 

 varied and surprising than the dreams of fiction. Of the gigantic 

 and extraordinary animals thus revealed to us by far the greatest 

 number have been described during the period now under review. 

 For instance, the gigantic Cetiosaurus was described by Owen 

 in 1838, the Dinornis of New Zealand by the same distinguished 

 naturalist in 1839, the Mylodon in the same year, and the 

 Archxopteryx in 1862. 



In America, a large number of remarkable forms have been 

 described, mainly by Marsh, Leidy, and Cope. Marsh has made 

 known to us the Titauo^aurus, of the American (Colorado) 

 Jurassic beds, which is, perhaps, the largest land animal yet 

 known, being a hundred feet in length, and at least thirty in 

 height, though it seems possible that even these vast dimensions 

 were exceeded by those of the Atlanto.^aurus. Nor must I omit 

 the Hesperornis, described by Marsh in 1872, as a carnivorous 

 swimming ostrich, provided with teeth, which he regards as a 

 character inherited from' reptilian ancestors ; the Ichthyornis, 



