President's Address. 
327 
accordance with the gradual disappearance of the coloured 
varieties before the spread of the white variety of our kind. 
Here, then, we have a twofold argument that may avail us 
in our researches, viz., the earlier appearance, and, con- 
versely, the earlier disappearance of the lower varieties of a 
species ; and applying this to Man, the coloured varieties, 
which are evidently inferior (whatever may be said to the 
contrary), must have long preceded the white, just as now 
they are passing away before it. 
In this way we carry the antiquity of man —high as it 
may be in Europe — to a still higher antiquity in the other 
continents of the Old World, and which must be geologi- 
cally investigated before any definite conclusion can be 
arrived at, either as regards antiquity or developmental 
descent.* The European men of the Bovine and Keindeer 
periods evidently belonged to the white or Caucasian variety, 
but we have no certain evidence whether the Abbeville 
flint-fashioners were of Caucasian, Mongolian, or other 
variety. To whatever variety they belonged, they were 
clearly of a date immediately post-glacial, though, could it 
be shown by craniology that they were of other type than 
the Caucasian, it would, in our opinion, be further proof of 
their high antiquity. If we are to pursue the subject of 
man's antiquity in Africa or Asia, this question of type must 
constitute one of the main elements of determination, for it 
would be outraging every principle in science to apply the 
test of variation and development to the other orders of life, 
and shrink from applying it in the solitary instance of man. 
Where we can prove by arch geological means a high anti- 
quity for man, let us adopt them ; where we can show the 
same result by geological methods, let us not neglect them ; 
but at the same time let us also value those palaeontological 
doctrines of progression and development which have thrown 
so much light on the order and connection of vitality in 
general. If there be such a law of progression, man must 
* Since the above was written, we observe that implements of quartzite 
have been discovered in the lateritic formation of Madras by Messrs Foote and 
King of the Indian Geological Survey, thus opening the way to this new and 
much desiderated line of evidence. 
