280 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



RISE AND PROGRESS OP MODERN VIEWS AS TO THE 

 ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN OF MAN. 



I now come to a branch of our subject wbich. I would 

 gladly have avoided touching on ; but as the higher 

 powers of the British Association have decreed that I 

 should preside over the Anthropological Department, it 

 seems proper that I should devote some portion of my 

 address to matters more immediately connected with the 

 special study to which that Department is devoted. 



As my own knowledge of and interest in Anthropology 

 is confined to the great outlines rather than to the special 

 details of the science, I propose to give a very brief and 

 general sketch of the modern doctrine as to the Antiquity 

 and Origin of Man, and to suggest certain points of diffi- 

 culty which have not, I think, yet received sufficient 

 attention. 



Many now living remember the time (for it is little 

 more than twenty years ago) when the antiquity of man, 

 as now understood, was universally discredited. Not 

 only theologians, but even geologists then taught us, that 

 man belonged altogether to the existing state of things ; 

 that the extinct animals of the Tertiary period had finally 

 disappeared, and that the earth's surface had assumed 

 its present condition before the human race first came 

 into existence. So prepossessed were even scientific men 

 with this idea — which yet rested on purely negative 

 evidence, and could not be supported by any arguments 

 of scientific value — that numerous facts which had been 

 presented at intervals for half a century, all tending to 

 prove the existence of man at very remote epochs, were 



