1860.] Proceeclings of tlie Asiatic Society. 437 



recent discoveries in various regions : more especially he referred to cer- 

 tain tumuli in Scania, where flint arrow-heads or spear-heads werefound 

 together with the bones of extinct mammalia, and associated also with 

 human remains, the skulls of which indicated them to belong to the 

 hyperborean type of mankind, being similar to those of modern Esqui- 

 maux ; an important fact, which tended, as he thought, to connect 

 the epoch of those remains with the glacial era of Agassiz, or at least 

 with the time when the Eein Deer and the Musk Ox roamed over what 

 is now Britain. But he maintained that however ancient may be the 

 remains of this hyperborean race in modern Scania, perhaps one of the 

 present American types of humanity in the New World, still,for various 

 reasons adduced, we must look to the tropical regions of the major 

 continent for the aboriginal habitat of the human being ; countries of 

 which the palceontology is almost utterly unknown. Mr. Blyth then 

 adverted to the incompleteness of the geological record as insisted 

 upon by Mr. Darwin ; and touched upon some other points, which 

 the lateness of the hour prevented his dwelling upon. 



Mr. Blanford briefly replied to remarks which fell from Dr. Kay, 

 that he had not professed to enter upon the subject of causation at 

 all ; but only upon the study of forms as indicating the direction 

 which causation had taken. 



The interesting discussion was closed by the Chairman, stating that 

 the thanks of the meeting were due to Mr. Blanford for laying before 

 them the views of Dr. Bronn. He observed that a comparison had 

 been made by Mr. Blanford between the progress of this new or 

 newly-revived theory of the mutability of species and the establish- 

 ment of the theory of universal gravitation. But he would remark 

 that in the establishment of the theory of gravitation there had been 

 two grand stages, the second of which was far longer and more la- 

 borious than the first. The first was the conception of the law, the 

 second was its verification. In the second, as well as the first 

 Newton did a vast deal himself, but it had been the work of the last 

 200 years to complete the demonstration, so long as nearly 100 years 

 after Newton the celebrated Clairant had been staggered by an error 

 in the moon's motion, which at first he could not explain on Newton's 

 theory, and went so far as to suggest that the law varied partly as 

 the inverse square and partly as the inverse fourth power of the dis- 



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