878 Address of A. R. Wallace at the Glasgow Meeting. 
origin is due to distinct and higher agencies than such as have 
affected their development. 
here is yet another line of inquiry bearing upon this sub- 
ject to which I wish to call your attention. It is a somewhat 
curious fact, that, while all modern writers admit the great an- 
tiquity of man, most of them maintain the very recent develop- 
ment of his intellect, and will hardly contemplate the possibility 
of men equal in mental capacity to ourselves, having existed in 
prehistoric times. This question is generally assumed to 
settled, by such relics as have been preserved of the manuiac- 
tures of the older races showing a lower and lower state of the 
arts; by the successive disappearance in early times of iron, 
bronze, and pottery; and by the ruder forms of the older flint 
implements. The weakness of this argument has been we 
shown by Mr. Albert Mott in his very original, but little 
known presidential address to the Literary and Philosophical 
Society of Liverpool in 1873. He maintains that “our most 
are found among ourselves.” In support of this view he ad- 
duces a variety of striking facts and genious arguments, a few 
of which I will briefly summarize. , 
On one of the most remote islands of the Pacific—Haster 
Island—2,000 miles from South America, 2,000 from the Mar- 
quesas, and more than 1,000 from the Gambier Jslands, are 
= 
& 
the island 
has only an area of about thirty square miles, or considerably 
a 
islands scattered widely over the Pacific add weight 
argument. 
* Journ. of Roy. Geog. Soc., 1870, pp. 177, 178: 
RO tee ae ES 5 ee Enna a eed Na 
Ege 
ae 
Bees oe 
