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you got to matters of minor detail, the conclusions often arrived at de- 
manded the most serious sifting before they were generally adopted ; and 
while he was quite prepared r to find that man did exist in the Pliocene 
period or did go even lower yet, having had very considerable oppor- 
tunity of looking into this matter, he had come to the conclusion that 
there was no evidence worth a straw, to give man a place in the Pliocene 
system of the earth’s history. The history of geological science was, 
more or less, a history of extraordinary blunders, and these blunders not 
committed by men who were tyros just beginning to work at one depart- 
ment of geology, but by men who stood at the very highest pinnacle of 
knowledge of the science. He would not have attempted to address the 
meeting to-night had others present taken the question up, but perhaps the 
Chairman would stop him if he detained them at too great length. He 
was trying to show that little dependence was to be placed upon the opinion 
of men of the highest eminence who came forward and said they had found, 
under such and such a surrounding, such and such an object, and it must 
certainly justify such and such a conclusion. Suppose some great man of the 
geological world came and told one a thing of that sort, the popular idea would 
at once be, “ Oh, we must believe that.” Forty years ago Professor Owen 
brought out his important work on the history of British fossil meat-giving 
animals, and in it he mentioned that there was in the York Museum the 
skull of a badger, agreeing in all respects with the badger of the present day, 
and that this skull had been found in an undoubted Pliocene formation in 
Suffolk, — that was, in the famous deposit known as the Suffolk Crag. Well, 
he had read that work of Professor Owen’s with the greatest possible 
delight and instruction, but he happened to know something about the 
Suffolk Crag, and something about the badger, and he thought 
he should like to see that Pliocene badger’s skull. Well, a short time 
after that, Professor Phillips was translated from the York Museum to 
succeed Dr. Buckland at Oxford, and they then wanted a successor 
to Professor Phillips. He accordingly said that he was willing to take the 
office, and, on appointment, went down to York, and, of course, over the 
Museum. The very first thing he rummaged for was that Pliocene badger’s 
skull, which, on examination, proved not to have the slightest claim to be 
Pliocene. It was nothing more than an ordinary badger’s skull. The fact was, 
that one or two hundred years ago living badgers were very abundant in 
the neighbourhood, which contained numerous crags and old quarries, 
not being worked, and the sides of which had fallen in and become over- 
grown with bushes. These crags and quarries were charming places for the 
badgers to burrow in. This badger had taken up its abode in one of these 
quarries, and died in its hole ; and then, twenty or thirty years after, the 
Pliocene quarry was worked again, and the workmen, of course, came across 
that badger’s skull, and they, finding it buried in the crag, turned it out and 
said, “ Here is a fossil.” He ought to tell the meeting how he knew that 
this was not a fossil at all. All the bones found in this Suffolk red crag were 
YOL. XY. o 
