ADDRESS. 15 



Is this not a case in which the imagination may be fairly invoked in 

 aid of science ? May we not from these data attempt in some degree to 

 build up and reconstruct the early history of the human family ? There, 

 in Eastern Asia, in a tropical climate, with the means of subsistence 

 readily at hand, may we not picture to ourselves our earliest ancestors 

 gradually developing from a lowly origin, acquiring a taste for hunting, 

 if not indeed being driven to protect themselves from the beasts around 

 them, and evolving the more complicated forms of tools or weapons from 

 the simpler iiakes which had previously served them as knives ? May we 

 not imagine that, when once the stage of civilisation denoted by these 

 Palaeolithic implements had been reached, the game for the hunter became 

 scarcer, and that his life in consequence assumed a more nomad character ? 

 Then, and possibly not till then, may a series of migrations to 'fresh 

 woods and pastures new' not unnaturally have ensued, and these follow- 

 ing the usual course of 'westward towards the setting sun' might 

 eventually lead to a Palieolithic population finding its way to the extreme 

 borders of Western Europe, where we find such numerous traces of its 

 presence. 



How long a term of years may be involved in such a migration it is 

 impossible to say, but that such a migration took place the phenomena 

 seem to justify us in believing. It can hardly be supposed that the pro- 

 cess that I have shadowed forth was reversed, and that Man, having 

 originated in North-Western Europe, in a cold climate where clothing 

 was necessary and food scarce, subsequently migrated eastward to India 

 and southward to the Cape of Good Hope ! As yet, our records of dis- 

 coveries in India and Eastern Asia are but scanty ; but it is there that 

 the traces of the cradle of the human race are, in my opinion, to be 

 sought, and possibly future discoveries may place upon a more solid 

 foundation the visionary structure that I have ventured to erect. 



It may be thought that my hypothesis does not do justice to what 

 Sir Thomas Browne has so happily termed ' that great antiquity, 

 America.' I am, however, not here immediately concerned with the 

 important Neolithic remains of all kinds with which . this great continent 

 abounds. I am now confining myself to the question of Palaeolithic man 

 and his origin, and in considering it I am not unmindful of the Trenton 

 implements, though I must content myself by saying that the ' turtle- 

 back ' form is essentially different from the majority of those on the wide 

 dissemination of which I have been speculating, and, moreover, as many 

 here present are aware, the circumstances of the finding of these American 

 implements are still under careful discussion. 



Leaving them out of the question for the present, it may be thought 

 worth while to carry our speculations rather further, and to consider the 

 relations in time becween the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Periods. We 

 have seen that the stage in human civilisation denoted by the use of the 

 ordinary forms of Paleolithic implements must have extended over a vast 



