President's Address. 
329 
Malay, &c.), each in its own proper head-quarter, would still 
remain a problem of antecedent date, requiring similar 
methods of research, and similar processes of solution. In 
this way, and on the fair presumption of the coloured and 
inferior being the older varieties, the antiquity of man as a 
species mounts still higher and higher, and the course of 
discovery may yet compel us — nay, will almost to a certainty 
compel us — to assign to him an origin coeval with the very 
dawn of what we are in the habit of regarding as the Qua- 
ternary system, if not, indeed, with the close of the later 
Tertiaries, and just when the more gigantic fauna of that 
epoch was passing away from the warmer zones of Asia, 
Africa, and America. 
A vote of thanks, moved by Mr William Turner, M.B., 
was given to Mr Page for his learned, suggestive, and 
interesting Address, and for his valuable services as Presi- 
dent of the Society, 
The Kev. James Brodie, of Monimail, concurred in the 
vote of thanks now passed, he considered the address of his 
old acquaintance, Mr David Page, as a very able one, and 
admired the clear and temperate manner in which he had ex- 
pressed himself. At the same time, he must say he dissented 
altogether from the conclusion to which he had arrived. 
He entered on the consideration of this question free 
from air bias. He believed the Bible to be unqtiestion- 
ably the Word of God, but he regarded the record in Genesis 
as having reference only to creatures at present existing. The 
covering of the earth with " darkness and the deep" implied 
a deluge altogether anomalous and miraculous. The creation 
which followed was in a great measure a reconstruction of 
beings formerly existing. In short, there was nothing in 
Scripture to prevent him believing that races of men had 
inhabited the earth previous to the creation of Adam ; but 
he had never seen any facts adduced that afforded the 
slightest proof of the existence of pre-Adamite man. 
He objected to Mr Page's conclusions on grounds purely 
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