284 
ORDINARY MEETING, May 18, 1868. 
Charles Brooke, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., F.R.C.S., Vice- 
President, in the Chair. 
The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the 
election of the following Second Class Associate was announced : — 
Lieutenant Edward E. Day, R.N., H.M.S. “Malabar,” Bombay Harbour, 
East Indies. 
The following paper was then read : — 
ON TEE COMMON ORIGIN OF TEE AMERICAN RACES 
WITE TEOSE OF TEE OLD WORLD. By the 
Rev. J. H. Titcomb, M.A., Mem. Viet. Inst. 
I N the year a.d. 1486, the prior of the Dominican convent 
at Salamanca summoned a meeting of divines for the 
purpose of investigating the alleged discovery of a new world 
by Columbus. It was a period of intense excitement. Up 
to that moment, science and Scripture had alike been made 
to teach that the world was round like a plate. The voyage 
of Columbus, and the theory which he propounded, completely 
overthrew that opinion. It produced, therefore, the greatest 
consternation among all orthodox divines. At the solemn 
conclave just mentioned, it was seriously contended that 
Columbus could not be right ; otherwise St. Jerome and St. 
Augustine must have been wrong. Among the arguments it 
was also contended that, however easily Columbus might have 
crossed over the ocean on the downward side of the sphere, yet 
he never could have sailed up-hill in coming back again ! But 
the reason which appears to have finally decided them in the 
rejection of the new theory was its incompatibility with Scrip- 
ture ; “ since to believe in inhabited lands on the opposite side 
of the globe would be equivalent to maintaining that there 
were nations not descended from Adam, it being impossible 
for them to have passed the intervening ocean 33 ! * 
* Wilson's Prehistoric Man , vol. i. 
