﻿Vol. 66.] 



ANNIVERSARY ADDKESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 



lxxxvii 



Fayiim awaiting the advent of Dr. Andrews, and the osteology of 

 the Neandertal race was known only in piecemeal until Prof. Boule 

 described the skeleton of La Chapelle aux Saintes from a district so 



Fig. 10. — Lower jaw of an Australian man, to show the 

 projecting canine (c). ( x §.) 



well worked over as the South of France. Many parts of the 

 world, in Africa, Asia, and Australia, still await investigation, and 

 at any moment the pick and shovel of advancing industry may 

 unearth some link in the chain of evidence more precious than 

 all the gold of the Rand. 



It may be remarked, in conclusion, that, so far as the evidence- 

 extends, Man seems to have attained at a comparatively early stage 

 the full powers of his intellect; his subsequent advance has been 

 due less to its continued development than to its constant exercise, 

 and especially to the perfection of speech, its great instrument. 

 Many great thinkers have expressed themselves with just emphasis 

 on this point, and a happy allusion to it is made by Huxley, who 

 remarks that of all animals Man 



' alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, 

 whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated 

 and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation 

 of life in other animals ; so that now he stauds raised upon it as on a 

 mountain-top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured 

 from his grosser nature by reflecting here and there a ray from the infinite 

 source of truth.' 



The whole history of Man, so far as it is known to us, has been 

 one long continuous advance, marked stage after stage by momen- 

 tous discoveries; already on his first emergence from obscurity in 



