President's Address. 



317 



being the highest known creature, comes latest on the geo- 

 logical stage, and that evidences of his existence are to be 

 found only in the most recent and superficial formations. 



It will be seen from the preceding statements that the 

 geological record is avowedly indefinite and defective — in- 

 definite, as it deals only with relative time ; and defective, 

 as many strata cannot be assigned to their proper positions, 

 partly from the obscurities of superposition, and partly from 

 the absence of typical fossils to connect them. But, while 

 admitting this defect in details, it must not be imagined 

 there is any uncertainty as to the broader features of the 

 record, or that any new discoveries have ever been at vari- 

 ance with the great order of sequence which modern geology 

 has established. Man, so far as every known fact tends to 

 indicate, belongs exclusively to the Eecent or Quaternary 

 period. No remains of his kind, no fragment of his works, 

 no trace of his presence, have ever been detected in earlier 

 formations. But though this is admitted on all hands, the 

 question still remains, at what stage of the Quaternary 

 are traces of his existence first detected ? Till recently the 

 general belief has been that man's first appearance on the 

 globe dates back, at the very most, to little more than six 

 or seven thousand years ; and so incorporated had this belief 

 become with others of a more sacred character, that few, 

 even though doubting, had the boldness to express a con- 

 trary conviction. Like the age of our planet, which was 

 also at one time restricted to a few thousand years, the 

 antiquity of man has become a question of science and 

 reason ; and well-informed minds are now prepared to ad- 

 mit, that as the earth has existed for untold ages, so man, 

 its latest creation, may have inhabited its surface for hun- 

 dreds of centuries. The evidence is purely geological, and 

 as such ought to be treated like any other problem in science, 

 without bar or hindrance from preconceived opinion ; or, as 

 it has been well said by the Bishop of London, in his late 

 address to our Philosophical Institution, " The man of science 

 ought to go on honestly, patiently, diffidently, observing and 

 storing up his observations, and carrying his reasonings un- 

 flinchingly to their legitimate conclusions, convinced that 



