57 THE president's address. 



accepted as a sacred right. They are, however, a very different looking 

 people to the degraded Lapps, v^ho are by some classed among the 

 Celtic family. It needs only a glance at their oblique eyes, high cheek 

 bones, low foreheads, bronzed skins, and straight black hair, to detect 

 their Mongolian origin, And this brings us to 'the fertile field for 

 speculation opened up by modern philosophers, as to the fixity or 

 mutability of species. How sublimely simple and harmonious appears 

 Darwin's theory of the developement of all species from few or even one 

 type, and yet, at first sight how unanswerable seems the objection 

 made by the other school, that if species have not altered during the 

 last 4,000 years, since the time of Pharaoh, they are not likely even 

 to have varied, for, as I daresay yoiu know, the beetles, dogs, cats, and 

 negroes portrayed on the Egyptian obelisks and tombs are identical with 

 the same animals an,d negroes of the present day, and the black slave 

 ■who offers the jewelled cup. to Pharaoh, is identical with the grinning 

 Sambo, who brings up tiffin in a Peninsular and Oriental steam boat. 

 The reason of this is plain ; where like united with like, varieties did not 

 arise, but once introduce a point of divergence, — let two divergencea 

 unite and the beginning of a new variety is established. This we see 

 even in our own day, take sheep for an example ; what can differ more 

 than the Spanish sheep ^yith la,rge curled horns, long hair, and bushy 

 tails, and tha fat-tailed sheep of Syria, with their large pendant 

 ears, and their enormous fat-laden tails ? and yet both, together with 

 our own totally different looking sheep are allowed by all sides to be 

 from, the same stock. Again how different are the several breeds 

 of dogs ; compare the Scottish terrier with the s^taghaund ; a New- 

 foundland with a greyhound, and say if members of different species, 

 such as wolves and jackals, are not more like some dogs than these 

 several breeds are to one another. Then we are tempted to enquire, do 

 the different races of men arise from one common origin, modified 

 by climate, habits, and dispositions ? or -were they essentially different 

 from the beginning? But this is far top wide a subject to discuss 

 to-night. Let me rather renaind you that not only all men, but all 

 minimal nature, whether Vertebrate, Articulate, Radiate or Mollusc are 

 precisely alike at one period of their existence, and this is the period 

 when, as some one observes, there is no difference between a frog and 

 a philosopher for all alike arise originally from the developement from 

 9, single cell. 



