32 
not having had a common ancestor. Those differences that now exist 
may have taken a very long time to bring about, and therefore I think 
Mr. Pattison’s chronology far too short. Many naturalists think that 20,000 
years was the least time in which such a change could be accomplished ; 
still, domestic cattle have changed very rapidly. The 20,000 years human 
period was the view of Bunsen, the great Egyptologist, and is, of course, 
subject to discussion.* We have not such good evidence, however, as to 
time in geology, as in other sciences, such as archaeology and philology. If 
your members will take up the subject of the origin of ideas, manners, and 
customs, with a reference to Egyptian and other ancient records, and to the 
analogies of natural history, and the evidence of climatal modifications, and 
so on, I am sure that you would get a very valuable series of papers on the 
antiquity of man. Such work, if impartially and systematically done, would 
give a fairer and more impartial view of the state of knowledge on this 
subject than has ever been hitherto presented. 
Mr. J. E. Howard. — Let me say a word about the Babylonian chronology. 
Mr. Pattison has referred to it as indicating a very long period, and giving 
a series of kings for hundreds of thousands of years. The members of the 
Society of Biblical Archaeology who are present, can attest the recent 
discoveries of Mr. Smith, which tend to confirm the Fragments of Berosus. 
Xisuthrus, in the arrow-headed inscriptions, is the name of Noah; but Mr. 
Smith has ascertained that the Babylonian records only trace ten generations 
from the first of the land Alorus — to Xisuthrus, which is exactly the same 
number that we have in Genesis from Adam to Noah. We have this difficulty, 
that the length of the reigns of these kings is extravagantly long. The dura- 
tion of the reigns is given in what are called sari, a saros being supposed to 
be 3,600 years, and the whole reign of these ten kings, 120 sari, gives the 
preposterously long period, for ten men, of 120 times 3,600 years. 
* Professor W. Kitchen Parker, F.R.S., in a letter upon this subject, says: 
“These race-distinctions of character took place rapidly, I have no doubt. 
Your Yankee is a good sub-species already, and a fine new type he is — good 
luck to him ! but he has lost for ever the full form, fresh colour, mild 
expression, and quiet self-possession of that happiest of all breeds, the Anglo- 
Saxon. I suspect that the African tribes — the Negro especially — became 
modified in a bad way from a nobler old-world type, not merely because of 
the sun and the swamp, but also because of their being frightfully sensual and 
baboonish. It is very remarkable how gently the features of the Easterns 
become Mongolian, as we pass from the north-west to the south-east of 
Asia, and I believe that forms could be found that would connect the ugliest 
Chinese with our nearest cousins in districts contiguous to the water-shed of 
the Indus. The whole subject is full of difficulties, and the rashest and 
most bigoted ethnologists are to be found amongst those who think they 
have got an easy method now of contradicting Scripture. Those of us who 
feel safe on that Rock can afford to wait for more light.”. — Ed. 
