38 



PROFESSOR HENRY WEBSTER PARKER, ON 



representing the organ of tlionglit, and speech, as the outcome of 

 the characteristics of the brain, that will have the greatest weight 

 with reasoning creatures as ourselves. On that point none of us 

 can have any doubt. 



Whatever be the amount of sagacity — of marvellous instinct as 

 we call it — exhibited by animals other than ourselves, we all know 

 that it is limited in its amount or development. The birds that 

 sing so sweetly to-day sang equally well 50,000 years ago, if they 

 were then existing. The beaver constructs habitations which dam 

 up the rivers, and its ancestors did the same many thousand years 

 ago ; but it has not yet done anything more ; and the ape, no 

 doubt, in the forests of Africa lives exactly as its ancestors did 

 also many thousand years ago. In fact, all the powers of these 

 animals are limited acd incapable of development. But with 

 man, his mental powers, that are capable of almost unlimited 

 development, as far as the elements of nature or his environments 

 permit, enable him to assume a position in nature which is 

 infinitely superior to that of any other created being. 



I am not prepared to go into this subject further to-night, but I 

 must repeat that we are all indebted to the Author for his Paper. 



The Meeting was then adjourned. 



REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 

 Dr. W. Bodkin writes : — 



I think the paper shows that man stands at the top of the 

 animal kingdom, nob because he has better sight, hearing, taste, 

 smell, or feeling, nor yet from his power of running, but because 

 he has fairly good averages of all these powers ; and that the part 

 where he does excel all the animal kingdom is the rational part. 

 The reasoning power together with imagination has enabled 

 man not only to compare things and draw conclusions as to like- 

 ness and difference, and make fresh combinations or inventions, 

 but he is also possessed of the hand to carry out these inventions. 

 Man has added to his eye power by the microscope and telescope, so 

 that no other animal can at all approach him in seeing power. So 

 again with the power of hearing, the telephone and phonograph 

 enable man to out-distance all competitors. Then again, though 

 man is not equal in the sense of smell to many animals, yet by his 

 knowledge of chemistry he detects the presence or absence, of ozone. 



