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supposition of an ancestral “ pre-homo” having lived in the Miocene epoch. 
With regard to corals, we know that they grow far better on the windward 
than on the leeward side of land, because there they get a continually 
renewed supply of water. The sea is “ full of rivers,” as the discoveries 
made in the Challenger show ; and a coral island, if it does not lie in the 
line of a particular current, will in that stratum of water in which it lies 
naturally exhaust the carbonate of lime and oxygen which it requires for 
vigorous growth. If it is in still water, therefore, it is not likely to increase 
so fast as when a fresh body of water is continually brought to play 
upon it. 
Mr. Pattison. — I am not aware that there is much that I need trouble 
you with. With regard to what has been said about the possibility of man 
being older than the present Pleistocene period, I think no observations yet 
made carry back the existence of man further than the upper gravels, and 
the assemblage of animals in which he is found may, I think, be useful, as 
our Chairman has intimated, as negative evidence with regard to the Miocene 
period. The case of the coral is beyond my subject, inasmuch as there is no 
allegation that the commencement of the present coral reefs was coeval with 
the introduction of Man. No one knows the distinctions attaching to this 
subject better than Mr. Charlesworth, who worked at it long ago in the Crag 
deposits, and who knows how different these corals are to the corals of 
modern days. As to the case of the rate of deposition of gravels which has 
been so appositely brought forward, we have no time this evening for dis- 
cussing it, and it is a subject which deserves to be treated by itself, for it 
has a very important bearing on this question. With regard to catastrophes, 
the case I have put is the introduction of a catastrophe at the latter end of 
the Palseolithic period after man visited these parts, to account for the shorter 
time which I propose to substitute for the theories of geologists who have 
gone in for a long period of time. But I need not dwell on that, for I hope 
that in my paper I brought it forward with sufficient clearness to make it 
intelligible. 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
