CHAP, xyiii.] SIR RODERICK MURCHISON'S ADDRESS. 487 
gical structure and curiously diversified organic remains, 
which enable him to fix the epochs of succession in 
the crust of the earth in other quarters of the globe, 
the interior of South Africa is unquestionably a grand 
type of a region which has preserved its ancient ter¬ 
restrial conditions during a very long period, unaffected 
by any changes except those which are dependent on 
atmospheric and meteoric influences. 
“If, then, the lower animals and plants of this vast 
country have gone on unchanged for a very long 
period, may we infer that its human inhabitants are 
of like antiquity ? If so, the Negro may claim as old 
a lineage as the Caucasian or Mongolian races. In the 
absence of any decisive fact, I forbear, at present, to 
speculate on this point; but as, amid the fossil specimens 
procured by Livingstone and Kirk, there are fragments 
of pottery made by human hands, we must wait until 
some zealous explorer of Southern Africa shall dis¬ 
tinctly „ bring forward proofs that the manufactured 
articles are of the same age as the fossil bones. In 
other words, we still require from Africa the same 
proofs of the existence of links which bind together 
the sciences of Geology and Archaeology which have 
recently been developed in Europe. Now, if the un¬ 
questioned works of man should be found to be coeval 
with the remains of fossilized existing animals in 
Southern Africa, the travelled geographer, who has con¬ 
vinced himself of the ancient condition of its surface, 
must admit, however unwillingly, that although the 
black man is of such very remote antiquity, he has 
been very stationary in civilization and in attaining 
the arts of life, if he be compared with the Caucasian, 
the Mongolian, the Led Indian of America, or even 
with the aborigines af Polynesia.”''' 
* “ The most remarkable proof of the inferiority of the Negro, 
when compared with the Asiatic, is, that whilst the latter has 
domesticated the elephant for ages and rendered it highly useful to 
man, the Negro has only slaughtered the animal to obtain food or 
ivory.” 
