110 REPORT 1876. 



laurel are often eaten by the larvae of moths that abound on our fnii1/-trees ; while 

 in the Tropics the leaves of the orange tribe are favoui^tes with a large number of 

 lepidopterous larvae ; and our northern firs and pines, althougli abounding in a 

 highly aromatic resin, are very subject to the attacks of beetles. My friend Dr. 

 Richard Spruce — who while travelling in South America allowed nothing connected 

 with plant-life to escape his observation — informs me that trees wliose leaves have 

 aromatic and often resinous secretions in immersed glands abound in the plains of 

 tropical America, and that such are in great part, if not wholly, free from the 

 attacks of leaf-eating ants, except where the secretion is only slightly bitter, as in 

 the orange tribe, orange-trees being sometimes entirel)' denuded of their leaves in 

 a single night. Aromatic plants abound in the Andes up to about 13,000 feet, as 

 well as in the plains, but hardly more so than in Central and Southern Europe. 

 They are perhaps more plentiful in the dry mountainous parts of Southern 

 Europe ; and as neither here nor in the Andes do leaf-eating ants exist. Dr. Sjiruce 

 infers that, although in the hot American forests where such ants swarm the oil- 

 bearing glands serve as a protection, yet they were not originally acquired for that 

 purpose. Near the limits of perpetual snow on the Andes such plants as occur 

 are not, so far as Dr. Spruce has observed, aromatic ; and as plants in such situa- 

 tions can hardly depend on insect visits for their fertilization, the fact is com- 

 parable -with, that of the flora of New Zealand, and would seem to imply some 

 relntion between the two phenomena, though Avhat it exactly is cannot yet be 

 determined. 



I trust I have now been able to show you that there are a number of curious 

 problems lying as it were on the outskirts of biological inquiry which well merit 

 attention, and which may lead to valuable results. But these problems are, as 

 you see, for the most part connected with questions of locality, and require full 

 and accurate knowledge of the productions of a number of small islands and other 

 limited areas, and the means of comparing them the one with the other. To 

 make such comparisons, however, is now quite impossible. No museum contains 

 any f^vir representations of the productions of these localities ; and such specimens 

 as do exist, being scattered through the general collection, are almost useless for 

 this special purpose. If, then, we are to make any progress in this inquiry, it is 

 absolutely essential that some collectors should begin to arrange their cabinets 

 primarily on a geographical basis, keeping together the productions of every island 

 or group of islands, and of such divisions of each continent as are found to possess 

 any special or characteristic fauna or flora. We shall then be sure to detect manj'' 

 imsuspected relations between the animals and plants of certain localities, and we 

 shall become much better acquainted with those complex reactions between the 

 vegetable and animal Idngdoms, and between the organic world and tlio inorganic, 

 which have almost certainly played an important part in determining- many of the 

 most conspicuous features of living things, 



Mise and Progress of Modern Views as to the Aiittquity and Origin of JIan. 



I now come to a branch of our subieot which I would gladly have a\oided 

 touching on ; but as the higher powers of tliis Association have decreed that I should 

 preside over the Anthropological Department, it seems proper that I should devote 

 some portion of my address to matters more immediately connected with the 

 special study to which that Department is devoted. 



As my own Imowledge of and interest in Anthropology is confined to the great 

 outlines rather than to the special details of the science, I propose to give a very 

 brief and general sketch of the modern doctrine as to the Antiquity and Origin of 

 Man, and to suggest certain points of difficulty which have not, I think, yet re- 

 ceived sufficient attention. 



Many now present remember the time (for it is little more than twenty years 

 ago) when the antiquity of man, as now understood, was imiversally discredited. 

 Not only theologians, but even geologists, then tauglit us that man belonged alto- 

 gether to the existing state of things ; that the extinct animals of tlie Tertiary 

 period had finally disappeared, and that the earth's surface had assumed its present 

 condition before the human race fii'st came into existence. So prepossessed were 



