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that I agree with him from beginning to end. I hold that the records of 
mammalia in the Eocene and Miocene periods are such that it is impossible 
even to expect to find man’s remains in these deposits. For given reasons 
Professor Hughes says that the remains of the animals, I presume he alludes 
to the mammalia, found in them are so different from those of later times, that 
man, if he existed at all, must have been different also. If we take Professor 
Gaudry’s deductions, I think he shows conclusively that not only is there not a 
single species of mammalia that lived at the time of those deposits to be 
found in existence at the present moment ; but that those which did exist 
then have given rise, by evolution, to the modern species. In those days 
there was no such hyaena as we have now ; I take it that the horse did not 
exist, but its earliest ancestor, if we may accept the theory that they sprang 
one from the other, was the Eohippus. Similarly, if we reason by analogy, 
and draw a comparison between the mammalia of those periods and the 
mammalia of the present day, assuming that the ancestor of man must 
have been subject to the same laws of evolution as they ; then, man, as he 
is now, could not have existed. Whether there was any intermediate, half- 
rational being, and whether he could make and use flint implements, is another 
question. It is, however, certain that man, as we know him, could not have 
existed in the Miocene or Eocene periods, if we are to judge by analogy. I 
would submit this view to the consideration of Professor Hughes. With 
regard to another point that has been referred to, we know that rivers do cut 
out the material from the channel through which they flow, and that they 
also may become silted up, these two operations going on together. But 
the whole gist of the paper lies in the fact that it brings us to this, — that 
all the evidences of the existence of man are confined to the Post-glacial 
period. Whether he can be carried beyond that is another matter ; but I 
see no reason why he should not be. The horse existed before the Glacial 
epoch, and therefore man might have existed as well ; but as far as these 
northern regions are concerned, I see no evidence whatever that he did. 
The Chairman. — I think that what was said by Mr. Henslow was quite 
to the point, because the paper certainly dealt with those physical conditions 
which we see around us as affording a chronology by which we are to measure 
the age of man. I could not help thinking that if you gave me an earth- 
quake, I would give you almost any physical condition you please. (Hear, 
hear.) Perhaps most of you may not be as well acquainted as I am, from 
the circumstances in which I have been placed, with some of those great 
physical changes that do occur at intervals in different parts of the world. 
It is but a few years since a district comprising 1,800 miles of South 
America was raised a considerable height, and remained in its altered position. 
Such a fact, of course, alters all the physical conditions affecting the adjacent 
rivers. I may mention another interesting fact which shows how little the 
chronology to be derived from the mud deposit of rivers can be relied on. 
Sir William Parker took his fleet up a branch of the Yang-tsi-Kiang in 1841 ; 
and in 1851, when I went up, that branch had become all solid land, and I 
sailed up a new branch altogether. (Hear, hear.) Not only was this the 
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