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greater part of which have, I think, been placed in the Library of the 
Institute. We are much indebted to Dr. Southall for his previous labours 
on this subject, and also for the facts and reasonings contained in his present 
paper.* 
To Gapt. F. Petrie, 
Hon. Sec., Victoria Institute.” 
The following from his Grace the Duke of Argyll, K.G., was then read : — 
“ January Yith, 1881. 
Sir, — I had intended to attend this evening on the occasion of Mr. 
Southall’s paper being discussed, but the severity of the weather and a cold 
prevent me from doing so. 
The human implements which seem to have been found in the auriferous 
gravels of California can hardly be supposed to be contemporary with the 
deposition of those gravels, unless they are found under conditions which 
make it certain that they could not have been introduced at a later epoch. 
I regard such an assumed contemporaneousness as in the highest degree 
improbable, considering the change which we know to have passed over the 
mammalian fauna since the probable epoch of those gravels ; and generally, 
I agree entirely in the view taken in this paper, and in the letter from 
Principal Dawson, of Montreal. — I am, dear Sir, Argyll. 
Capt. F. Petrie.” 
The following from Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, F.B.S., was then read : — 
“ Owens College, Victoria University, Manchester, 
1 4th J anuary, 1881. 
I regret that my engagements forbid my hearing Dr. Southall’s in- 
teresting and impartial paper, and of expressing my entire agreement 
with his views as to Professor Whitney’s ‘Pliocene Man,’ of California. 
In the Lowell lectures in Boston, last October, I pointed out that the 
auriferous gravels of California offered no evidence on the question, because 
none of the human remains have been proved to be contemporaneous with 
them. The human remains belong to the class of relics left behind in 
California, Arizona, and New Mexico by the ancestors of the present native 
tribes, and imply a rude civilisation of the same kind. They have, in my 
opinion, either been embedded in the gravel by the action of streams, or 
of slips from the mountain sides in modern times, or are the result of 
interments, or of the mining operations which Dr. Southall describes, 
carried on by the native tribes in modern times and not in the Pliocene age. 
With regard to the Calaveras skull, I feel inclined to the view of Mr. Bret 
Harte rather than to that of Professor Whitney. There is, in my opinion, 
no satisfactory evidence in the New or Old Worlds of the existence of man 
in the incalculably remote Pliocene age. — I am, dear Sir, yours truly, 
W. Boyd Dawkins.” 
* In another communication, Dr. Dawson, F.R.S., commenting upon the 
whole question, remarks : — “ I think the tide is decidedly turning as to the 
antiquity of man, as well as with reference to the origin of species, and the 
Institute has certainly done its part in contributing to this result.” 
