TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 



421 



wanting. The details have been filled in, and the principle adopted has been 

 proved to be of world-wide application — to apply to North and South America 

 and to Southern Asia and Africa as well as Europe— the living mammalian 

 species in each geographical province being taken as a standard. It has been 

 accepted by Osborne and others, and is now being used for the grouping of the 

 Tertiary strata of America. It has been used in the organisation of the 

 Manchester Museum. It is therefore fitting that it should be brought up to 

 date. 



The classification is based on the evolution of the mammalia, the only group 

 in the animal kingdom that was, as Gaudry writes, ' en pleine evolution ' in 

 the Tertiary Period, all the lower forms having already undergone their principal 

 changes and none changing fast enough to be of service in defining the stages. 

 The scheme is as follows : 



2' hose of the Divisions of the TertHary Period. 

 Descriptions. Characteristics- 



Historic, in which the events are Modern types of man. 



Man the 



recorded in history. 



Prehistoric, in which man has multi- 

 plied exceedingly and domesticated 

 both animals and plants. Wild 

 Eutheria on the land of existing 

 species, with the exception of the 

 Irish elk. 



Pleistocene, in which living species 

 of Eutheria are more abundant than 

 the extinct species. Man appears. 



Pliocene, in which living Eutherian 

 species occur in a fauna mainly of 

 extinct species. 



Miocene, in which the alliance 

 between living and extinct Eutheria is 

 more close than in the preceding stage. 



Oligocene, in which the alliance 

 between extinct and living Eutheria is 

 more close than in the Eocene. 



Eocene, in which the Eutheria are 

 represented by living, as well as by 

 extinct, families and orders. 



master of nature. 



Modern types . of man-cultivated 

 plants. Domestic animals — dog, 



sheep, goat, ox, horse, pig, &c. Wild 

 Eutheria of living species. 



Extinct types of mankind. (Modern 

 types ?) Living Eutherian species 

 dominant. Man. 



Living Eutherian species present. 

 Extinct species dominant. 



No living Eutherian genera. Living 

 Eutherian genera appear. Anthropoid 

 apes. Extinct genera dominant. 



No living Eutherian genera. Living 

 families and orders. Extinct families 

 and orders numerous. 



No living Eutherian genera. Living 

 families and orders. Lemuroids. 

 Extinct families and orders dominant. 



The most important break in the succession of life-forms occurs at the 

 close of the Oligocene age in Europe and America. From this break down to 

 the present day the continuity is so marked that we may conclude that the 

 present face of the earth is merely the last in a long succession in the Tertiary 

 Period. 



5. The Geological Evidence in Britain as to the Antiquity of Man. 

 Bij Hon. Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S. 



Professor Boule, in his masterly essay published in Anthropologie, xxvi. 

 Jan.-Avril 1915, freely criticised the evidence on which the antiquity of man 

 in Britain has been stated to go back beyond the early Pliocene age, and con- 

 cludes that it is not of a nature to throw light on so important a problem. 

 The antiquity of man — or, in other words, his place in the geological record — 

 is a geological question to be decided, like all others, on the lines of a rigid 

 induction. In each case it is necessary to prove not only that the objects are of 



