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without the answers into his Philosophical Dictionary. The infidelity which 
has arisen in the present day is peculiarly injurious to the young, because 
it assumes what is false, — that there is an antagonism between true science 
and religion, whereas there is really none. I myself have not the leisure or 
the opportunity to go deeply into all the questions which are raised by the 
paper of Professor Birks, but I am glad to find so able an advocate coming 
forward, with learning, great powers of mind, and accuracy of thought, to go 
into the depths of the subject, and to show that those men who differ from the 
Scriptures as to inspiration and as to the doctrines of our redemption through 
our Lord Jesus Christ, are in the wrong, and ground all their objections 
upon mere supposition and conjecture, without a line of history or an atom 
of real proof to support them. 
Eev. J. J. Coxhead. — The existence of an ice age, of which we find many 
traces, being acknowledged, it appears to me that we are bound to accept 
Mr. Croll’s hypothesis, which seems probable, until a more satisfactory one 
is substituted for it. (Dissent.) I think that the existence of an ice age 
and the finding of supposed human implements in the Drift are arguments in 
favour of the antiquity of man. 
A Member. — But the periods of the Ice age and of the Drift have to be 
ascertained. 
Mr. T. K. Callard. — Dr. Currey has told us that he could not see what 
bearing the learned paper we have listened to has upon the question of 
Man’s Antiquity. It might be that Dr. Currey expected more than was 
proposed by the author. I do not think that Professor Birks supposed that, 
after reading his paper, we should leave to-night, certain that there did not 
exist a great antiquity of man, but if he has succeeded in removing one of 
the strongest arguments that has hitherto been used for assigning to man 
such great antiquity, I think he has done all that could be expected 
from him in one evening (Hear, hear), and I think he has very successfully 
done this. It has been accepted by most of our leading geologists, 
that man first appeared on the globe some 200,000 or 210,000 years 
ago. But how was that period arrived at ? It was by accepting that as the 
time of the Glacial epoch ; for, as Professor Birks says in his second para- 
graph, “ Human deposits are thought to occur in quaternary strata or drift, 
directly after the close of a great ice period.” If that great ice period, then, 
was 200,000 years back, and the human deposits occur immediately after its 
close, you have the case proven that man lived 200,000 years ago. But 
there is nothing whatever, either in astronomy or geology, to fix that as the 
date of the Glacial epoch, except the excentricity of the earth’s orbit, which 
was so great at that period. Now, if Professor Birks has made it clear to 
your minds, in answer to Mr. James Croll’s hypothesis, that neither the 
excentricity of the earth’s orbit, nor the changes produced by the precession 
of the equinoxes, nor the altered obliquity of the ecliptic ; that none of 
these astronomical changes, nor all of them put together, would have pro- 
duced an ice age ; if he has made that clear, we then must give up the 
VOL. XIII. D 
