4 g [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



Professor Patten, in the course of an interesting and 

 instructive lecture, referred to the strides which had taken place 

 in recent years regarding knowledge of man's origin and his 

 " place in nature." Less than seventy years ago, he said, it was 

 universally believed that man was "specially created" within, 

 comparatively speaking, recent years. The year 1841 saw a 

 remarkable revelation in respect to the evidence of man's origin. 

 In that year Mons. Boucher de Perthes discovered rudely chipped 

 and unpolished flint implements in quarternary deposits and 

 associated with the now extinct mammoth. Since then thousands 

 of these stone implements, undoubtedly the work of man's hands, 

 had found their way into museums, and considering the deposits 

 in which they had been found and the extinct animals with 

 which they had been associated, the great antiquity of man had 

 been arrived at. The Palaeolithic man who fabricated these rude 

 stone implements existed in Europe perhaps during — at all events 

 towards the close of — the Glacial epoch at least 100,000 years ago. 

 Apart from what science had told them, much information 

 regarding man's antiquity had recently come to light from the 

 researches of the historian and antiquarian. From extensive 

 excavations made in Egypt and Babylon had been recovered 

 tablets, monuments, and clay cylinders, bearing hieroglyphics 

 which proved that at the time of the supposed creation of man in 

 Asia great and populous cities, with their magnificent temples, 

 high arts, advanced literatures, and philosophical religious systems 

 had been existing for 2,000 years ; indeed further excavations 

 might yet reveal an older script for both Egypt and Babylon. 

 How long it took for the inhabitants of these great ancient 

 Empires to reach such an advanced stage of civilization could 

 only be estimated by hundreds of thousands of years. In 

 advancing towards their conceptions of civilized humanity, man, 

 over vast periods of time, passed through a slow and often painful 

 process of very gradual evolution from the rudest of beginnings. 

 Before dealing more fully with the origin of man and his relation- 



