274 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
should also supply the humble student with the means of obtain- 
ing that general outline of the natural sciences, without which 
progress in detail is impossible. Confine yourself to the map of 
Devon, and you will fail to grasp the geography of even one county. 
The formation of a typical Museum, desirable always, has indeed 
become imperative since the general acceptance of the theory of 
evolution has linked in unbroken unity the most distant and diverse 
organic forms. 
To illustrate precisely what I mean from the science in which I 
feel most interest, I would point out that the much-vexed "Devonian 
Question " of the geologist cannot be adequately apprehended with- 
out a certain knowledge of the palaeontology of the Silurian system 
on the one hand, and of the Carboniferous on the other. Nor can 
the corals of which our lime rocks are in great part composed be 
fully understood, without some such acquaintance with their recent 
representatives as our Museum is fortunately in a position to supply. 
And so with our very varied igneous and metamorphic rocks. They 
need the amplest illustration from without. 
Or take Anthropology. The vestiges of ancient man in this 
county, though reaching back almost to the remotest antiquity yet 
suggested for the human race, are very fragmentary, very obscure. 
If you want to complete the links of the chain which connects the 
paleolithic man of Devon with the modern speculator upon his 
status, you will find the material in the instruments and weapons 
of modern savages, or in the caves, the gravels, the kitchen middens, 
the lake dwellings, the peat mosses, the barrows, which underlie or 
accompany modern civilisation. You cannot spell out Anthropology 
if you drop any of its letters ; but with the aid of our own exten- 
sive display of the manufactures of savage man, and of the rich 
loan from his own almost unrivalled private collection of flint im- 
plements, for which we are indebted to our valued secretary, 
Mr. Brent, all is clear, and you can trace the palaeolithic dweller in 
the Axe valley, or the haunter of the Torbay caves, stage after 
stage, through the stone and bronze and iron ages, until his repre- 
sentatives stand here to-day, and wonder at the distance they have 
travelled. 
But I may not detain you further. On behalf of the Institution 
over which I have the honour to preside, I have to thank most 
heartily the kind friends by whose aid this work has been accom- 
plished. May I venture to express the hope that the interest shown 
