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great deterioration that has taken place in some of the African tribes, even 
within the memory of man. In many of those tribes yon will find existing a 
mode of extracting metals from the ore which these people, in their present 
state, are thoroughly incompetent to invent, and which they only retain by 
handing it down traditionally from father to son. Sir Samuel Baker speaks 
very strongly upon this point, and he is perhaps the best authority we have 
upon African travel except Livingstone ; and his accounts and Livingstone’s 
perfectly coincide. Then, for another proof of the antiquity of civilization, 
you must take astronomy, which is common to almost all nations where they 
are not altogether sunk in barbarism. You not only get a knowledge of 
astronomy, but the same sort of knowledge as regards the constellations 
existing among all the ancient peoples ; and that incidentally affords a strong 
argument against the whole theory of Professor Macdonald. I am sorry now 
to be obliged to advert to the paper before us, because I must say I quite 
agree with Mr. Row respecting it. The Professor treats his theories and his 
facts something like a magician, conjuring them up whenever he wants them 
in the most marvellous way, and just as they suit his fancy. He gives us 
three or four different creations — of yellow men, of black men, of men of all 
sorts, at his will ; but he does not tell us, after all, whether the Adamic race 
were black, or white, or yellow 
Professor Macdonald. — They were neither black, white, green, nor yellow. 
(Laughter.) 
Mr. Reddie. — Well, the addition of another colour only makes it still 
more puzzling. (Laughter.) He doubts the scriptural account of creation, and 
treats all the arguments on that subject very much as he treated the map 
of America on the wall, by ripping it • up, in order to show us the direction 
of the Gulf Stream — cutting them up remorselessly. (Laughter.) But it is of 
no use to treat the matter thus. It is very easy indeed to tear up a paper 
map, but you cannot cut up a continent in that way. His various separate 
creations are obtained in a very curious manner ; wherever he wants a 
migration or a new creation, he simply conjures it up with his wand in the 
most surprising manner, which reminds me of nothing so much as the kind 
of processes which were continually gone through in the tales we used to 
read, when we were boys, in the Arabian Nights. (Laughter.) But I do 
not think the polygenists will cordially accept his theory ; for certainly the 
polygenists of the Anthropological and Ethnological Societies do not now 
believe in many separate creations ; they seem always more than contented 
even with one ! Professor Macdonald is evidently an anti-Darwinian ; and 
there is a strong argument against the theory that the first man “ worthy to 
be called a man ” originated from some animal progenitor, in the simple 
question : How was the first human baby nourished ? (Laughter) For a 
human baby is a most difficult creature to bring up, and a gorilla would 
certainly not take half the trouble that would be necessary. As to the 
further question of the possible growth of civilization, I referred at some 
of our previous meetings to the case of the Sikhs, who, though not in the 
most degraded state of barbarism, were still far from being civilized, and 
under the influence of Nanaka, a sort of Indian iconoclast and reformer, 
