﻿Tol. 66. .] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. lv 



the biologists but by students m of our own science. It offered an 

 independent challenge to existing beliefs. The new views enjoyed 

 a triumph in this case also, and we are now ready to accept with 

 indifference whatever geological epoch may be assigned to the 

 birth of our species, our sole concern being with the adequacy of 

 the evidence. 



Palaeolithic man was the subject chosen by Sir John Evans for 

 his Anniversary Address to our Society in 1875, and the next year 

 saw the publication of Prof. Boyd Dawkins's ' Cave Hunting.' At 

 this time research on prehistoric man in these islands reached its 

 high-water mark, and the extraordinary advance which has attended 

 subsequent investigation we owe to the industry and sagacity of 

 our friends on the Continent, especially in France. 



To those who have lived through the great intellectual revolution 

 of the nineteenth century, nothing is more surprising, next to 

 the complete ascendancy of the evolutional doctrine in every de- 

 partment of thought, than the change of scene which has followed 

 on the change in the point of view. Our time has been spent in 

 climbing the mountain-barrier, and our eyes are so accustomed to 

 the bare rocks, peaks, and precipices that it is almost with surprise 

 that we now find ourselves looking over a broad expanse of varied 

 landscape, smiling and mysterious, where numerous bands of ardent 

 explorers are already busy entering into possession. The precise 

 nature of our newly discovered kinship, its degree of affinity, the 

 successive steps in our pedigree, the changes of the environment, 

 the final stages in the development of oiir species, the origin of 

 existing races, and the ultimate mechanism by which the trans- 

 formation of the species has been effected, these as well as a crowd 

 of others are the questions which now press upon us for solution. 

 The amount of laborious industry which has been devoted to their 

 investigation is colossal and indeed appalling, the more especially as 

 what has already been accomplished bears but a small proportion to 

 that which remains to be done. The progress of discover)-, instead 

 of diminishing, increases the- magnitude of our task. Thus, in the 

 endeavour to reconstruct the genealogical tree of the Primates, 

 recourse must be had in the first place to comparative anatomy, and 

 especially to the results obtained by dissection, in any case a slow 

 and laborious process, but now especially tedious — for, since we 

 have become aware of the wide range of individual variation, it no 

 longer suffices to dissect a single example of a species ; in order to 

 obtain an adequate knowledge of its structure a great number of 

 examples are required, so that the frequency with which inconstant 



