704 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Association visited Canada this year. The Society of Arts kindly lent its prem- 

 ises for the occasion, and its great theatre was crowded in every part long before 

 the hour of meeting. The chair was taken by Sir H. Barkly, G.C. M.G., K.C.B., 

 F. R.S., — who after the new members had been announced by Captain F. Petrie, 

 the secretary — welcomed Dr. Dawson amid loud applause, and asked him to 

 deliver his address : It was on " Prehistoric Man in Egypt and Syria," and was 

 illustrated by large diagrams, also flint implements and bones collected by Dr. 

 Dawson himself on the spot during his winter tour in the east ; Professor Boyd- 

 Dawkins, F. R.S., kindly assisted in the classification of the bones. In dealing 

 with his subject, Dr. Dawson remarked that, great interest attaches to any remains 

 which, in countries historically so old, may indicate the residence of man before the 

 dawn of history. In Egypt, nodules of flint are very abundant in the Eocene 

 limestones, and, where these have been wasted away, remain on the surface. In 

 many places there is good evidence that the flint thus to be found everywhere 

 has been, and still is, used for the manufacture of flakes, knives and other im- 

 plements. These, as is well known, were used for many purposes by the ancient 

 Eo-yptians, and in modern times gun-flints and strike-lights still continue to be 

 made. The debris of worked flints found on the surface is thus of little value as 

 an indication of any flint-folk preceding the old Egyptians. It would-be otherwise 

 if flint implements could be found in the older gravels of the country. Some of 

 these are of Pleistocene age, and belong to a period of partial submergence of 

 the Nile Valley. Flint implements had been alleged to be found in these gravels, 

 but there seemed to be no good evidence to prove that they are other than the 

 chips broken by mechanical violence in the removal of the gravel by torrential 

 action. In the Lebanon, numerous caverns exist. These were divided into two 

 classes with reference to their origin; some being water caves or tunnels of sub- 

 terranean rivers, others sea caves, excavated by the waves when the country was 

 at a lower level than at present. Both kinds have been occupied by man, and 

 some of them undoubtedly at a time anterior to the Phoenician occupation of the 

 country, and even at a time when the animal inhabitants and geographical feat- 

 ures of the region were different from those of the present day. They were thus 

 of various ages, ranging from the post-Glacial or Antediluvian period to the time 

 of the Phoenician occupation. Dr. Dawson then remarked that many geologists 

 in these days had an aversion to using the word " Antidiluvian," on account of 

 the nature of the work which, in years now gone by, unlearned people had attri- 

 buted to the Flood described in Scripture, but as the aversion to the use of that 

 word was, he thought, not called for in these days, he hoped it would pass away. 

 Speaking as a geologist, from a purely geological point of view, and from a 

 thorough examination of the country around, there was no doubt but what there 

 was conclusive evidence that between the time of the first occupation of these 

 caves by men — and they were men of a splendid physique — and the appearance 

 of the early Phoenician inhabitants of the land, there had been a vast submerg- 

 ence of land, and a great catastrophe, aye, a stupendous one, in which even the 

 Mediterranean had been altered from a small sea to its present size. In illustra- 



