190 
as your contributor now repeats bis challenge, and, above all, 
as this is not the first time that the strange crotchet has been 
propounded, I shall attempt a refutation of it.’ (( 
1 It is amusing to hear what had frankly been called the 
old tradition of the creation of Adam,” characterized at once 
as “a theory” of mine, as “the mere coruscation of a too 
exuberant fancy,” and as “ a strange crotchet, by a writer 
who forgets, while he is writing, lus admission that he had 
heard of it before 1 It is high time surely that this sneering 
tone should cease in discussing such questions. I trust the 
institution of this Society will do something to put a stop to 
it. Before eminent ethnologists or physiologists talk thus o 
crotchets, or parade that in their opinion “ no c ° m P et ° nt 
of science believes in Adam and Eve,” they had bettei be 
sure that the theories they have adopted, as so superior^ o 
what they call “time-honoured and strongly -rooted prejudices, 
are not themselves mere crotchets, that will never eit er 
become “time-honoured,” or succeed iu establishing a preju- 
dice in thinking minds. Even traditions must have had a 
beginning, and strong prejudices may exist m favour of what 
is merely new, as well as for what has stood the test , 
and withstood not a little antagonism. (( j *- 
But to return to our ethnologist.— He says, Let us 
what this supposed civilized man and woman ™ stk ™ b “ 
when first created. If they had the persons of Apollo and 
Venus, and the brains of Newton and Elizabeth, they must 
still have been cowering, helpless savages, for they a ) 
thing to acquire. The imaginary civilized pair must have 
been at first without language, without fire wrthout tools, 
without clothing. They had to learn even to walk and to 
run. . ..They must have fed on the dead carcases of fas. , 
reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, or starved. In fact, the civi- 
lized man of your imaginative contributor turns ^out o be a 
more arrant savage than a native of Australia, of Tmri a del 
Fueo-o, or of the Andaman Islands ; for all of these had m 
some small progress.” This is ruthless-I had almost said savage 
—logic ! to which the only reply of a rational being could be, 
that if the “imagined civilized man” was really a savage 
that could not even walk or talk, he could not have bee 
supposed to be elevated or civilized.— Of course, you all know 
very well who are the real authors of this imagined animal, 
J 1 ” -- doubt a very long time!— 
that “ a long time back” — no —— - ■ - , 
bad neither intellect nor speech, and it seems (un irnnw 
animals) not even power to walk! Although also we know 
as a fact, that perhaps the great majority of the ^uman race 
have lived, and do probably now live, upon vegetable food, jet 
