climate. The glacial theory was first mentioned in 1837; by 1857 it was accepted with avidity all over the world, and nearly everything diluvial was attributed to ice; Agassiz even spoke of glaciers coming down to the sea in Brazil: there are signs of them, I believe, in Equatorial Africa. I think I was the first to revive the Huttonian doctrine about rain-that is to say, to show that there must at one time have been twenty or thirty times as much rain as at present. Mr. Pattison has been obliged to limit his quotations from Prestwich and Lyell; but if he had given more, he would have shown that they both always demanded ice-action, or floods produced from melting snow. Dana imagines that the old Mississippi was fifty miles wide, and was supplied by melting snow. He does not give any calculation as to the depth of the snow-field, or sun's heat, to supply a river of that size. I calculate it would take 600 times the present rain and heat to supply water to feed Dana's river. There is no passage in Prestwich which gives you the idea that he contemplated a previous greater rainfall than we have at present; in fact, he thought the mean temperature was only just above freezing. The prehistoric period was a complete snow age according to Prestwich; with one degree over frost there could be very little rain indeed, yet all the torrents which he speaks of, were to be the products of melting snow or an occasional torrential shower; he depended almost entirely on snow and ice-water for the excavation of the valleys, which Sir C. Lyell referred partly to tidal action. There has been as much change on this point in geology as on most others, arising from more extended observation. Lyell at first followed Buckland, and urged strongly, in his early writings, that man was extremely modern, and that species were permanent, and not subject to change. I mention this to show that a similar great change of view has taken place on the permanency of climate: first came the wateraction of Hutton and Playfair; then, the view of ice and snow-action of Prestwich and Lyell; and now Mr. Pattison has been so bold as to say that all the world are agreed that there was excessive rain-action, or a pluvial period. This certainly helps his argument for reconsideration of the question, because it shows that those eminent geologists did not always hold the same theory, but had their primary, secondary, and tertiary views and notions within sixty or seventy years. first brought forward my theory in 1853, of greater rivers; and when afterwards, in 1866, I suggested my pluvial period, I was told that it would not do, as it smacked of the Deluge. To-night Mr. Pattison has only taken the geological branch of evidence of the antiquity of man. As you are aware, there are many other sources by which you can get some confirmation on this subject as a check on your conclusions. Mr. Pattison has not alluded to Egypt, where there is a long chronology and a list of kings for 30,000 years. The question there is, whether those kings

Geol. Mag., Sept. 1875.

natural flints; but there are many, I am sure, which are artificial, and on this subject Mr. Whitley and I are at issue. There were thirty-six specimens of Brixham flints, fifteen of which were artificially worked; and if there was only one specimen of artificial workmanship, it would be as good as a thousand. I hold letters from Mr. Prestwich, and from Mr. Boyd Dawkins, saying, in effect, that all computations of the dates of geological phenomena are inaccurate and useless for chronological purposes. Mr. Dawkins then refers me to his book and seeks to explain, or rather recapitulates the statement made in that book, that there are glacial phenomena at Settle more recent than the remains of man. This may be so, without its proving that these remains are pre-glacial, for this would carry them back to a far greater antiquity than any one supposes, or than there is any evidence of.

The Rev. Prebendary Row.-Has Mr. Pattison's attention been directed to the excavations made in Troy?

Mr. PATTISON.-No: I have looked to see whether they would furnish any evidence, but they are too modern for us here this evening.

Mr. Row. I understand a flint age was discovered there, or a set of flints supposed to belong to the first flint age, and below that a much higher form of civilization; if this were clearly established, it seems to me that it would have a most important bearing on this question.

Mr. PATTISON.—I have not followed it at all, but I should think it very likely, but not very important, because the evidences of a primitive civilization and barbarism overlay each other in turn, and these changes have been very rapid indeed in Asia Minor-a country which used frequently to be overrun by barbarism.

Mr. A. TYLOR.-I have listened to Mr. Pattison's paper with much attention, and think it is by far the best résumé on the antiquity of man which has appeared. Hitherto those who have written well upon this subject have been original observers as well as writers, and have taken their own point of view. In the paper we have just heard every one must admit that the evidence is most fairly stated, although we may differ as to the conclusions. I can say, for myself, that in what I have written I have · tried to make out the relative age of man and of the gravel-beds themselves, from the geological evidence alone, and not from the opinions of others. Perhaps I may be allowed to refer to the change of view that has taken place, even in my time, in regard to the age and manner of deposition of these gravel-beds. When I first joined the Geological Society, thirty years ago, what is called the glacial hypothesis was not much known. Playfair, in 1805, observed the land ice-action in Switzerland, but did not apply it to lower ground. Agassiz and the older (Dr.) Buckland, in 1837, took the whole world by surprise when they spoke of glaciers having once existed in these temperate climates. The older geologists, such as Hutton and Playfair, had not given sufficient attention to the probable accumulation of snow and ice in former periods, or to the evidence everywhere of such great and recent changes of

climate. The glacial theory was first mentioned in 1837; by 1857 it was accepted with avidity all over the world, and nearly everything diluvial was attributed to ice; Agassiz even spoke of glaciers coming down to the sea in Brazil: there are signs of them, I believe, in Equatorial Africa. I think I was the first to revive the Huttonian doctrine about rain-that is to say, to show that there must at one time have been twenty or thirty times as much rain as at present. Mr. Pattison has been obliged to limit his quotations from Prestwich and Lyell; but if he had given more, he would have shown that they both always demanded ice-action, or floods produced from melting snow. Dana imagines that the old Mississippi was fifty miles wide, and was supplied by melting snow. He does not give any calculation as to the depth of the snow-field, or sun's heat, to supply a river of that size. I calculate it would take 600 times the present rain and heat to supply water to feed Dana's river. There is no passage in Prestwich which gives you the idea that he contemplated a previous greater rainfall than we have at present; in fact, he thought the mean temperature was only just above freezing. The prehistoric period was a complete snow age according to Prestwich; with one degree over frost there could be very little rain indeed, yet all the torrents which he speaks of, were to be the products of melting snow or an occasional torrential shower; he depended almost entirely on snow and ice-water for the excavation of the valleys, which Sir C. Lyell referred partly to tidal action. There has been as much change on this point in geology as on most others, arising from more extended observation. Lyell at first followed Buckland, and urged strongly, in his early writings, that man was extremely modern, and that species were permanent, and not subject to change. I mention this to show that a similar great change of view has taken place on the permanency of climate: first came the wateraction of Hutton and Playfair; then, the view of ice and snow-action of Prestwich and Lyell; and now Mr. Pattison has been so bold as to say that all the world are agreed that there was excessive rain-action, or a pluvial period. This certainly helps his argument for reconsideration of the question, because it shows that those eminent geologists did not always hold the same theory, but had their primary, secondary, and tertiary views and notions within sixty or seventy years. I first brought forward my theory in 1853, of greater rivers; and when afterwards, in 1866, I suggested my pluvial period, I was told that it would not do, as it smacked of the Deluge. To-night Mr. Pattison has only taken the geological branch of evidence of the antiquity of man. As you are aware, there are many other sources by which you can get some confirmation on this subject as a check on your conclusions. Mr. Pattison has not alluded to Egypt, where there is a long chronology and a list of kings for 30,000 years. The question there is, whether those kings

Geol. Mag., Sept. 1875.

were all in one line, or whether there were separate kingdoms for Upper and Lower Egypt, and three or four monarchs reigning together? There are the advocates of a short as well as of a long chronology. Then there is the question of race: there was within twenty years a belief-a scientific belief— held by most eminent naturalists, that mankind did spring from a pair, and that all animals did the same. I heard the late Professor E. Forbes, at the Royal Institution, declare, very clearly and positively, that there was no evidence in the animal kingdom of any one individual belonging to a species being found in a position apart from others of the species. He believed in the doctrine of specific centres. The test of the theory of evolution is really to be found in the evidence of geology. Darwin's theory of evolution, all must admit, is most convenient for classification of specimens, and for arrangement of species, by nearest affinities or by their smallest differences; but because organisms are arranged in a settled scheme, it does not follow that there is a progressive or unlimited range of development for each part or characteristic of a species. The law of change is a question to be decided by observation; both Forbes' and Darwin's theories* were supported and deduced solely from a consideration of actual observed facts. You may find in the Reptiles four main divisions: successive changes of form, in time, occur in every part of the skeleton; sometimes ascending to a more complex form, at other times descending no one can say there is a gradual gain in size, power, intelligence, or fitness for reptile life in any one of the divisions, or any progression or evolution: no one has yet connected these changes with any positive law of development; we can point to numerous changes in forms succeeding each other, but links in the chain are wanting. I plead for liberty of opinion and for suspension of opinion as to the laws that govern the incoming of new species, until all the fossil evidence has been analyzed by the scientific method. There is a particular family of Brachiopoda of which 3,000 species are recognized by naturalists; many Brachiopoda are living now, and they begin at the earliest times in the Silurian rocks: they are, you know, a very numerous family, containing many living species; but many more are preserved in a fossil state. There is no evidence of what may be called evolution among them-no species appears to be the development of another species. The forms of individuals of the same species of this family, taken from the opposite sides of the Atlantic, have been compared without finding the smallest difference in localities so distant

* Hæckel (in 1876 edition of History of Creation, edited by Ray Lankester) makes a remark in favour of Centres of Creation, although he is a strong evolutionist (page 46, vol. ii.). Thus "We may be permitted to assume that the original form of every larger or smaller natural group only originated once in the course of time, and in only one part of the earth." I observe that a very unscientific term, "spontaneous generation," frequently occurs in this work.—(A. Tylor.)

from the common centres. Colonies of species, started at particular times in different formations, have spread to immense distances, and their track can be traced by the persistency of type which characterizes almost all the species, until suddenly they come to an end, and a new form as suddenly occupies their place. Every specimen contained in museums all over the world has been examined by the most competent naturalists, to find a single clear case of development, or a repetition of the same species in this immense family, but at present without success. The numbers of the lowest organisms have never decreased; therefore there can have been no general system of progressive development from some low organic type.* As to the law of changes, the late Mr. Babbage made this suggestion: That you might make a machine to go on with a clock, with a particular series of differences, for thousands of years; and then, by an automatic change prearranged in the formation you would find the series changed, and go on afresh, and so on for ever, the machinery carrying its law of change with it. That is very much the case with the family of the Brachiopoda: new species are constantly coming in, and old ones dying out. No one has suggested what change of condition has to do with form or sculpture of the shell of mollusca; every change of form must have an object-origin, near or remote. We are however met by this difficulty: that there is no discernible law for a genus or species first coming in: it was on this ground that the great naturalist, Edward Forbes, believed in specific centres. If the Terebratula caput serpentis, now living in the North Sea, could be fossilized, no living naturalist could say that it ought to belong to the present period more than to the Oolite, or to the Oolitic period more than to the Silurian. We have nothing to assist us to define the cause of change, or to help the Darwinian view of struggles for existence, or changes of material conditions, influencing the shape or size of any organ, in the case of any one species of the Brachiopoda. Edward Forbes had studied morphology, and yet he considered every individual fossil as having sprung from one pair of the particular primordial species. If you take man, you will find that in different countries he has a different brain, size, aspect, and skin, and is under very different modifications; but there is no evidence of any living men

* See Barrand's Colonies, and Davidson's Brachiopoda, page 264, 1857-62; also page 47, Davidson's Journal de la Société Malacologie, 1876; also Murchison, King, and others on the persistency of this species with distribution of the species of the Brachiopoda. I quote one passage— "Since the Cambrian period, both great divisions continue to be represented without showing any tendency to pass one into the other."(A. T.) Principal Dawson, F.R.S., in his 1874 Annual Address as President of fixity of species, the Natural History Society of Montreal, strongly insists on the giving remarkable instances among the Fauna on the coast of America (see note, vol. ix. p. 236).—Ed.