392 
ee 
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 
HE meeting of the American Association for the A dvance- 
ment of Science was held this year at Portland, in the State 
of Maine, during the fourth week of August ; there was a large 
attendance of well-known scientific celebrities and members. The 
following account, for which we are indebted to the Vew York 
Tribune, will give an idea of some of the most important papers 
and discussions. 
A discussion on the Darwinian hypothesis, which was started 
by Prof. Swallow, who is a vigorous opponent, was continued 
by Dr. Dawson, who began by stating with some fullness of de- 
tail the demands upon our credence made by the advocates of 
the evolution theory. Among other requirements of the theory, 
he said, it must provide an explanation of the origin of life. To 
accomplish this the experiments of Bastian were brought for- 
ward. Referring to these, he stated that no less an authority 
than Prof. Huxley, though an evolutionist, had denied their 
conclusive character and disputed the alleged results. We are 
expected to admit, in every department to which scientific in- 
quiry relates, that in all things there has been a successive pro- 
gress from the lower to the higher. Why should we make this 
admission? What proof is there of it? The recent discoveries 
of embryology, showing the likeness of early forms of the 
embryo to other animals of the same families, furnished to the 
advocates of evolution no real argument in its favour. They 
proved nothing. Admit if you will the close resemblance of 
cimilar bones and general physical structure in the ape and man, 
it is not the slightest evidence of identity. While it may be true 
that there is bone for bone in monkey and in man, still it re- 
mains that the bones of one are different from those of the other. 
The making of monkey and of man is explicable quite as readily, 
to say the least, on the theory of plan as on that of evolution. 
The history of the growth of an animal has been cited as the 
evidence of a development from a lower to a higher form, But 
what are the facts in the case? The egg grows into the animal, 
and that organism produces an egg again. This is revolution, 
not evolution. 
We are told to accept as a postulate that mind too is a result 
of development ; that the moral as well as the material being is 
simply a consequence of the evolying process. I do not grudge 
the naturalists who have adopted such theories the intellectual 
exercise which is involved, but I regret that much of their labour 
is wasted,-and the results will be burnt when the fires of truth 
are applied to the chaff they are accumulating. This is not a 
question of physics that they are arguing, it is one of metaphysics, 
and it would be well for our children as well as growing scientists 
if they were taught more of mental and moral philosophy as a 
basis for such inquiry. 
But I thank the students who are thus engaged for some good 
results of their exertions. They have thereby succeeded in re- 
ducing the superfluous numbers of species, and have obtained far 
better views in respect to classification. Gool results will also 
flow from the profound embryological researches of the day. 
But I am sorry for the investigators, for their reputations are at 
stake, and they have chosen a mistaken path. 
We are, however, approaching in our studies a correct theory. 
After its appearance in geological history, every species has a 
plastic tendency to spread to its utmost limits of form. Then 
ensues a period of decadence until it may become extinct. This 
has been set forth in some of my printed memoirs on the plants 
of the carboniferous series. 1 believe that a similar process is 
true of the human race. He referred to the skull of Mentone 
and its finally developed character—a grandly developed man 
cerebrally and bodily. The burial of his dead testified to his 
religious belief. The people of the Cromagno skull age were of 
a similarly elevated character. The only point of difference from 
men to-day was in the flattening of one of the leg-bones. This 
was perhaps a result of the habits of the tribe, running through 
forests in pursuit of game. It begins to be admitted that the 
man of $Vestern Europe came in with the modern mammalia at 
the close of the glacial period. This was a period of decadence, 
and when the pliocene fauna were dying out and new forms were 
taking their places. The most ancient form of man is beyond 
the average standard of modern humanity. If the man of 
Cromagno or Mentone had been sent to Harvard, he would have 
Fae graduated with the full honours of an average American 
student. 
“NATURE Bi ad 
‘flattened tibia. 
“ =} Sow 
-_ *. . 
[Sepé. 11, 1873 
Prof. Morse stated that Dr. Dawson and Prof. Swallow had 
both misquoted Prof. Huxley, who had said, in respect to the 
ancient skull referred to, that it might have held the brains of a 
thoughtless savage, or it might have contained those of a philo- 
sopher. Dr. Dawson had referred to only the differences in 
those remains from those of the man of to-day in respect to the 
There were, however, several other characters 
of a similar nature which Dr. Dawson had not referred to, some 
of which had been discovered by Prof. Wyman, and had not yet 
been published. In the existing races of man the joramen 
magnum (the large opening at the base of the skull through 
which the brain communicates with the spinal cord) exhibited 
very little change of position in its relation to the rest of the 
skull, while with the higher primates (apes) this opening is very 
near the posterior portion of the skull. In eleven ancient skulls 
from the shell heaps of Tennessee, the foramen magnum in every 
case was nearly an inch further back than in those of present 
existing races. The powerful muscles on the sides of the head 
that move the jaws leave a distinct line at their upper points of 
attachment. These lines are called temporal ridges. In all 
present existing races a space occurs on the top of the skull, 
between these lines, of from three-and-a-half to four inches. In 
the apes these muscles meet in the median line which rises into 
a bony crest so characteristic of the gorilla, There was a re- 
markable skull discovered by Prof. Wyman in the lowest beds 
of the ancient shell heaps of Florida, This has the temporal 
ridges approaching each other within a half inch at the top of 
the skull. If the high development of the skull referred to by 
Mr. Dawson was such as he states, it only carries man further 
back. Similarly, in the light thrown upon the history of man by 
the wonderful discoveries in archzeology, where we meet with 
traces of an ancient civilisation, with complicated language and 
manners, we can surely believe in savage hordes pre-existing 
from which this ancient civilisation has been evolved. : 
As to the early traces of man, we must fully appreciate the rare” 
possibility of their occurrence. Wherever you dredge in the 
waters of the present day the traces of man are among the rarest” 
discoveries. "The Lake of Haarlem, upon whose waters naval 
battles have been fought, and on whose shores a dense popula- 
tion has existed, was drained, and on its bottom not the slightest 
traces of man’s existence were found. Prof. Morse dredged re- 
peatedly for years off the shores of Maine, and no trace of man 
was ever brought up, except a single spike. When we consider 
how abundant the material for such remains must be now com: 
pared with those furnished by the simple methods of life and the 
sparse population of earlier days, the indications of man’s exist- 
ence in geological eras must be of the rarest occurrence. In 
fact, in such rocks as the drift, only the rude stone implemen 5 
could be preserved. ‘ 
The evolution theory as compared with that of special creation 
presented similar features to the undulatory theory of light as 
compared with the emission theory. Newton’s theory required 
a new modification with every discovery in optics, until, as a 
writer said at that time, the emission theory is a mob of hypo 
theses. The undulatory theory of Young not only explained all 
that was difficult to Newton, but gave physicists the power of 
prevision. So with evolution. It not only accounts for existing 
phenomena, from the modification of a flower or the spot on 
a butterfly’s wing to the genesis of the solar system, but it has 
endowed naturalists with the gift of prophecy and enabled them 
to predict the intermediate forms afterwards discovered in the 
records of the rocks. 
On Calvert's Supposed Relics of Man in the Miocene of the 
Dardanelles, By G. Washburn.—The author reports, in view of 
the facts to which the paper refers, as to the flints, the split bones, 
and the marks upon the fossil bone, that he believes that Mr. 
Calvert and Sir John Lubbock (who had never seen the speci 
mens) are mistaken in the conclusions to which they have come, 
and that they have not been able to find any evidence whatever 
at the Dardanelles in reference to the antiquity of man. 
The Rotation of the Planets asa Result of the Nebular Theory. By 
Prof. Benjamin Peirce.—Prof. Peirce’s paper set forth an explana- 
tion of the actual rotation of the planets on the supposition of thei 
being formed according tothe nebular hypothesis, from rings thrown 
off from the rotating main body in the process of condensation. 
He instanced more particularly the planets Jupiter and Saturn. 
| The inner portions of such a ring having a less velocity than the” 
outer ones, axial rotation in the same direction as that of the 
primary would be determined in the breaking up and running 
together of the ring into a planetary:body. He showed, bya 
mathematical analysis of the movements of the particles com. 
