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I hardly know whether it is necessary to make any observations on that point, 
because the question of language is a very large one indeed, and, so far as it 
has been touched upon this evening, I do not think that anything has been 
advanced which is conclusive against Mr. Titcomb’s argument of a common 
language ; on the contrary, there are proofs at any rate that in some respects 
the language of remote nations is alike, and therefore so far a proof of their 
common origin. Then, in regard to social habits and customs, there is a 
very curious instance which occurs to me, and which will be found described 
in Foster’s voyages. On his last voyage he found that one of the tokens of 
grief among the Californian people and in Vancouver’s Island was the chopping 
off of one joint of the little finger of the left hand, and he found also that the 
same custom prevailed among one of the largest tribes of the Hottentots, 
among whom chopping off the first joint of the little finger of the left hand 
was not only considered a mark of mourning, but of honour ; and in point 
of fact they exhibited their finger with the joint chopped off just as a man 
might exhibit one on which he wore a mourning ring as a token of grief. I 
suppose it will be said that this is a mere arbitrary custom 
Mr. Reddie. — Merely arbitrary, according to the view of Sir J. Lubbock. 
Mr. Pattison. — Well, it is quite as arbitrary as any of those which have 
been mentioned ; but I think Mr. Titcomb’s theory is right, that it could 
not have sprung from the mere sense of the people, or from any super- 
natural communication (hear, hear), but from some mode of intercom- 
munication ; and that is further strengthened when we reflect that some of 
the customs mentioned have a ritualistic bearing. I will not trespass further 
on your time. I was glad to hear the accumulative arguments of Mr. 
Titcomb, because it is only in that way, by the accumulation of obscure 
items, that we can come to a reasonable conclusion. I think that a reason- 
able conclusion has been come to, and that a larger study of the subject 
would tend still more to prove it. To my mind one of the best proofs of 
the extreme naturalness and probability of the Scriptural account of the 
dispersion of mankind is to be found in the fact of the enormous exercise of 
ingenuity to which men are put in order to account for it in any other way. 
Rev. W. Mitchell. — I will just make one observation upon a paper 
which is so very valuable, and which has met with such very general 
acceptance. I may say that I can hardly conceive why, except for the pur- 
pose of drawing our attention to what may be considered an unorthodox view 
of the question, Professor Macdonald has introduced his system of pre- 
Adamitic men. I think that the answer to such a theory is contained in the 
paper itself, and in the arguments which have been brought forward to prove 
the original unity of mankind, dispersed throughout the earth. And I take 
my stand on the high ground of Biblical interpretation. Men in all ages, 
since the Bible has been looked upon as the book of God’s revelation, have 
universally adopted one view in regard to the interpretation of that book, 
namely, that the whole human race sprang from one common ancestor ; that 
that ancestor of the human race fell ; that the human race multiplied, and 
became exceedingly wicked ; that the whole race was destroyed, with the 
