328 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
be as amenable to it as the rest of creation, and whatever 
variation occurs in his race must be taken, along with other 
elements, as a measure of time and duration. We are aware 
that many geologists shrink from the test of variation, and 
feel an uneasy tenderness whenever the question of man's 
descent becomes involved in their researches and specula- 
tions. Truth, however, will never be attained by such weak- 
ness. In science as in morals error becomes only more 
deeply rooted, and bigotry more emboldened, the longer that 
honest conviction hesitates, or gives to its beliefs a timorous 
and uncertain utterance. 
Such are some of the reasonings that suggest themselves 
in reviewing the question of " Man's Place in the Geological 
Eecord." In the first place, let it be treated without bias 
or predilection, as a matter of natural history and geology. 
In the second place, let us avail ourselves of all the evidence 
that history, archseology, geology, and palaeontology can 
supply. And in the third place, let us, as true geologists, 
be wary in assigning dates in years and centuries, while the 
whole superstructure of our science is founded on a relative 
and not upon an absolute chronology. Guided by these 
methods, it would appear that man has been an inhabitant 
of Southern and Western Europe from a time immediately 
succeeding the close of the glacial epoch, and that in these 
regions his antiquity dates, if not from the very earliest, at 
least from the earlier of the Post-tertiary formations. How 
long ago this may have been in years and centuries, there 
is no condescension on the part of legitimate geology ; but 
clearly it is far, very far, beyond the limits of the ordinarily 
received chronology of the human race. But ancient as this 
may be, the implement-bearing gravels, the cave-earths, the 
peat-mosses, shell-mounds, and lake-dwellings of Europe 
cannot be taken as a measure of antiquity for Asia, from 
which, as everything tends to show, the first races of Europe 
were derived by the ordinary means of natural dispersion 
and selection. And even were the first appearance of the 
White or Caucasian race geologically determined in Asia, 
the first appearance of the coloured varieties (Mongol, Negro, 
