41 
I reply that, so far from this being the case, they have resisted the evidence 
put before them as long as they could ; but let me inform this meeting as to 
what a most eminent scientific man, and a most firm believer in those views 
as to the authority of the Scriptures, which this Society desires to maintain 
—I allude to the late Dr. Prichard — thought ; and what was his judgment 
on the general question of the Antiquity of Man before this particular part of 
the subject came up. It is remarkable that physiologists have long been 
coming to the conclusion, that if you are to limit to a few hundred years the 
period of man’s existence on this earth before the Exodus, commencing from 
the period usually assigned to the Deluge, it is difficult to imagine how the 
three distinct forms of the human race, exhibited by the Negro, the Egyptian, 
and the Jew, all of which are so clearly and definitely shown in the paintings 
of ancient Egypt, could have arisen in so short a space of time. (Hear.)* Dr. 
Prichard was a very firm advocate of the doctrine of the unity of the human 
race, and the derivation of the whole of that race from one common stock. 
He wrote a most learned and laborious work on the subject, and the last 
quantity found, which would otherwise seem to be inconsistent with the 
supposition of human workmanship. 
“ 4. The circumstance that no bones or other remains referable to man have 
been found with the flint articles, is more in accordance with the suppositions 
stated above, than with that of their human origin, in any other way than as 
the rejectamenta of an ancient manufacture. 
“ 5. From a summary of the facts given by Sir Charles Lyell at a meet- 
ing of the British Association (1859), as the result of personal investiga- 
tions, it appears that the gravels in question are fluviatile and dependent on 
the present valley of the Somme, though still apparently of very great 
antiquity. This places the subject in an entirely different position from that 
in which it was left by Perthes and Prestwich. River gravels are often com- 
posed of older debris, re-assorted in a comparatively short time, and contain- 
ing tertiary remains intermixed with those that are modern ; and it is 
usually quite impossible to determine their age with certainty. Further, if 
we may judge from American rivers, those of France must, when the country 
was covered with forest, have been much larger than at present ; and at the 
same time their annual freshets must have been smaller, so that nothing is 
more natural than that remains of the savage aborigines should be found in 
beds now far removed from the action of the rivers. When to this we add the 
occurrence at intervals of great river inundations, we cannot, without a series 
of investigations bearing on the effects of all these changes, allow any great 
antiquity to be claimed' for such deposits. The subject is, in short, in such a 
condition at present, that nothing can with safety be affirmed with respect 
to it. 
“ I may add that Sir Charles Lyell, while admitting the apparent contem- 
poraneous association of human remains with those of extinct animals of the 
Tertiary period at Brixham, rejects as modern the so-called fossil men of 
Denise in central France, which had been associated with the Abbeville 
discoveries/' 
* Dr. Kitchen Parker, F.R.S., President of the Microscopical Society, 
whilst dissatisfied with the modern view of the Chronology of Genesis, yet 
has called my attention to the distinct race that the Americans are becoming, 
how a short time has produced a considerable change. He says, “ The 
Yankee is a good subspecies already, and a very fine new type he is.” — [Ed.] 
