scientific world, who I believe is almost a leading authority regarding the bones of the skull-Mr. Emmett. I hope that all who are interested in the subject will read that Paper, at the end of which is a bibliography. I have protested in Sussex, and my opinion is here confirmed, that the evidence has been insufficient to justify scientific men in giving to this collection of bones that primary position which has been assigned to them. May I remind you that the Evolution doctrine is a theory? If you keep that point clearly before you, and then weigh the evidence for and against it, you may make some progress in investigation ; but if you assume that it is absolutely proved, then I must bow my head and enter a protest. This is a very serious matter, because it leads many to undermine the authority of Divine Revelation. Therefore I suggest that, before permitting these bones to occupy the position which many give to them, we look for more bones and more implements. Mr. T. B. BISHOP: I have pleasure in seconding the vote of thanks. I have read Mr. Dale's paper with great interest, because the theory of the evolution of Man has occupied me for some time, and I have in the press a book, Evolution Criticised, which deals rather fully with the different branches of the subject. Professor Arthur Keith's recent book, The Antiquity of Man, gives details of all the discoveries that have been made, some sixty in number, of skulls and skeletons, and other relics of prehistoric man. In the great majority of cases the skulls are quite similar to those of men of modern type, but there are about sixteen cases in which the remains, chiefly those of the so-called Neanderthal race, are alleged to show ape-like characteristics. Several of these latter have for a long time been looked upon as missing links between the anthropoid ape and modern man, but Professor Keith shows that the discoveries made during the last ten or fifteen years, largely of members of the Cro-Magnon race, prove that men of quite modern build lived so far back in the Pleistocene period that the Neanderthals and others could not possibly have been in their line of ancestry. Mr. Dale's paper quite confirms this. Professor Keith now adopts another theory, and supposes that far away in the Miocene period a humanoid stem separated from the original animal stem, and that, later, in the Pliocene, the Neanderthals and other races also became separated, so that we find in the Pleistocene, men who, so far as the bony framework of their bodies is concerned, are practically the same as modern man. Mr. Dale speaks in his paper of the burial rites of these prehistoric men, which show their belief in a future life. He speaks also of their artistic productions, which are, of course, remarkable. Dr. Astley contends that this artistic faculty could not have been evolved in a generation, and that the ancestors of the Cro-Magnons, going a good way back, must have been distinctly men. The Piltdown skull, of which Mr. Dale speaks in the latter part of his paper, is very fully discussed by Dr. Keith, who says: "Piltdown man saw, heard, felt, thought, and dreamt much as we still do." There is a great controversy going on between Mr. G. S. Miller, of the United States National Museum, and Mr. Pycraft, of the Zoological Department of the British Museum, as to the jaw of the Piltdown man, Mr. Miller declaring that the jaw does not belong to the skull, but that it is the jaw of a chimpanzee. Mr. Dale speaks of these remains as being recognised by all authorities as the oldest human remains. Professor Osborn, however, in Men of the Old Stone Age, contests their geological age. He says: "I have placed the Piltdown man in a comparatively recent stage of geologic time; an entirely opposite conclusion to that of Dr. Smith Woodward." In several cases of these prehistoric skulls, the geological age of the strata in which they were found is now questioned. One difficulty, now that the Missing Link theory has failed, is to account for the disappearance of the so-called Neanderthal race, leaving no descendants. As to the Heidelberg jawbone, Professor Branca, in his Fossil Man, warns us of the impossibility of deciding what a skull was like merely from a jawbone. As a fact, there are many practical difficulties, I may say absurdities, besetting the theory of the evolution even of the body of man from the animal, leaving aside all reference to man's higher nature. In another book of Professor Keith's, The Human Body, written before he found that the missing links must be given up, he uses as arguments for the evolution of man from an ape-like ancestry, many small organs in our bodies which have some resemblance to similar organs in the bodies of the ape, such as certain muscles, the tip of the outer ear, a lobe at the base of the right lung, the long and narrow nails of man, the hairs on certain parts of the body, etc. But the question naturally arises, How is it that these trifling characteristics should have persisted to the present day, while the bony framework of the body became what it now is as far back as the Pleistocene period? It must be understood that none of the evolutionists hold that a race of anthropoid apes, such as those which at present exist, were the forefathers of mankind; what they suppose is, that in Miocene times, or earlier, there were ape-like animals who were the common ancestors of man on the one hand, and of all varieties of the apefamily on the other. But there is no explanation of the fact that while there are many sorts of apes, science freely acknowledges that there is only one race of mankind. Huxley says: "I cannot see any good ground whatever, or any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of man." Now, if we suppose that there was such an ancestral ape, who was the progenitor of man, we have several questions to ask-How did man obtain his large brain? How did he lose the hairy covering of his supposed ancestors? How did he acquire the gift of language? How did he assume his erect posture? How did he get his shorter upper limbs and longer lower limbs? How did he get his flattened. foot, with the non-opposable great toe? How was the human hand evolved? How did the teeth of man become differentiated from those of the ape world? We ask, in what order did these changes come, and what cause could be assigned for such changes? To take only the change of posture, Professor Keith says: "The closer one studies the matter, the magnitude of the structural transformation required by a change of posture becomes more and more apparent. There is not a bone, muscle, joint, or organ in the whole human body but must have undergone a change during the evolution of our posture." Similar questions are no doubt mooted in the books of the leading evolutionists, but these authorities give us no help at all, for at every point they are hopelessly at variance. As Mr. Dale says: "The mazes of speculation on this head are great and diverse." Dr. Keith's solution is that the process occupied millions of years— a phrase he uses several times-but this makes the persistence in the human body of small characteristics similar to those in the body of the ape all the more unintelligible. I suggest that nothing less than a series of miraculous interferences by a Power above nature could possibly have brought about the changes that would be required for the evolution of man from the ancestral ape without any trace being left of its process. Does it not make it simpler if we can only believe that-" the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul"? Dr. W. WOODS SMYTH: I am sure we may all congratulate Mr. Dale upon the temperate and graceful way in which he has handled this most delicate and difficult subject. The flint implement evidence, as he has said, has certainly been overdone. However, I beg to differ in regard to the Neanderthal man. There is no right evidence for cutting him out of man's genealogical tree and linking him with the ape, and this view is united with a grave error, which the Victoria Institute will never receive, namely, that there have been several species of men. It is easy to show that this is a fallacy. Of the Quadrumana there are over 200 species; when we come nearer to man in the Simiidæ, they drop to 11 species; nearer, still in the Anthropopithecus, there are only two or three species, and in the Orang only one. These facts destroy the contention of there ever having been several species of men. Again, as Professor Ray Lankester says "No Evolutionist now believes that the ape stood in the ancestry of man, although we meet with men very ape-like in appearance. The ape is only an offspring from the human line. The blood reaction test shows that the ape is related to man as the donkey is to the horse. But the ass was never in the ancestry of the horse." It may disarm opposition to the doctrine of the evolution of man to remember that Professor Klaastch upholds the view that man has had an entirely independent line of descent from that of the lower animals, and going far back to the very earliest roots of the mammalian genealogical tree. That is to say, low down in Paleozoic or primary epoch-a view which I have also held. The blood reaction test also shows that between man and the lower animals there is absolutely no relationship. We have an evidential fact in support of this point from an unexpected source. In Psalm cxxxix, Revised Version, we read "I will give thanks unto Thee; for I am fearfully and wonder fully made; Wonderful are Thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, When I was made in secret, And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. And in Thy Book were all my members written, Which day by day were fashioned, When as yet there was none of them." The writer of Ecclesiasticus xvii, 5, or one of his transcribers, evidently understood the "day-by-day" of this Psalm to refer to the days of Genesis. The Psalms are remarkable for far-reaching inspired truths: let us beware of making this scripture, which attests a great natural fact, of none effect by our own traditions. Genesis tells of the creation of man; the mode, except in the case of Eve, is not recorded. This Psalm tells us the mode, namely by Creative Evolution. Mr. A. W. SUTTON, J.P., F.L.S.: Mr. Dale quotes from the Bishop of Birmingham, and I conclude that he adopts the bishop's views as quoted: "I venture to say that there is no man who is not thankful, for the great Creator's sake, that the intertwining of His creatures has been accepted on scientific knowledge." I would like to ask what the lecturer considers is meant by the "intertwining of God's creatures." I would like to ask Mr. Dale if he agrees that that has been accepted on scientific knowledge or scientific explanation. The next question comes from a closing paragraph of the paper. Mr. Dale says: "We dare not deny Evolution altogether." Not speaking merely for the sake of argument—for as our Chairman says, the matter is of vast importance-I should like to ask what kind of evolution he speaks of. Is it organic, that of plants and animals? Because if so, scientific men are not prepared to say that there is any increasing evolution in animal or plant life. To what evolution does the lecturer refer, when he speaks of the evidence as increasing day by day? I speak subject to correction by those who know better, but I believe I am correct in saying, that Darwin's |