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Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
It was not, however, till a time to which the recollection of 
many now living extends that the scattered elements of Anthro- 
pology assumed sufficient coherency to he formulated into a science, 
and to give expression to a theory of man’s origin more in accord- 
ance with observed facts than that which regarded him as the 
sudden product of a creative fiat. As time progresses, the scientific 
discoveries which gave rise to this important change of opinion are 
apt to he forgotten, in the midst of the engrossing social and intel- 
lectual problems which are daily springing up in the ever-widening 
field of human activity. Let me, therefore, very briefly bring to 
your recollection some of the more outstanding features of these 
discoveries, and of the intellectual upheaval which so speedily led 
to the recognition of Anthropology as an important branch of 
human knowledge. 
Prior to the publication of Sir Charles Lyell’s work on The 
Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, isolated discoveries 
were recorded, from time to time, in dilferent parts of Europe, dis- 
closing facts which, in the opinion of a few savants, could only he 
accounted for by assigning to Man a higher antiquity than was then 
the current opinion. These discoveries consisted, for the most part, 
of the remains of Man — bones and industrial relics — associated with 
the bones of extinct animals, in undisturbed deposits of Quaternary 
times. The reception at first given to this class of evidence in 
scientific circles may be estimated from the following notes on a 
few of the earlier discoveries. It was about the beginning of the 
second quarter of this century that Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay, 
first became a subject of interest, owing to the researches of the 
Eev. J. MacEnery, who asserted that he found in it flint imple- 
ments, associated with the bones and teeth of extinct animals, below 
a thick continuous sheet of stalagmite. But the legitimate inference 
from these facts, viz., that Man was contemporary with these ani- 
mals, and lived before the deposition of the stalagmite, had little 
chance of being accepted when opposed by the teaching and 
authority of so famous a geologist as Dr Buckland, author of the 
Reliquim Diluviance and The Bridgewater Treatise on Geology and 
Mineralogy. 
The facts on which Mr MacEnery based his conclusions were 
verified by fresh excavations in the cavern made by Mr Godwin- 
