Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/51

Rh vast continent on the lines of Anglo-Saxon civilization. An enforced and uncongenial union could have no benefit for either people.

In welcoming the association at the civic reception on Wednesday afternoon, previous to the opening of the meeting, speeches were made by Lord Aberdeen, for the Dominion Government, and Mr. Shaw, the mayor, for the city—the Governor of Ontario, who was to represent the province, being unwell and not present. Mayor Shaw, alluding to the American visitors, expressed the feeling of the Canadians very aptly by saying: "They mingle with our people on the friendliest of terms; we are delighted to have them come, and sorry when they go away. They are our good neighbors—the Americans—but they are only our neighbors. You are more closely related; you are our own kith and kin, . . . though separated by three thousand miles of ocean."

President Evans's address dealt, first, with archaeology as a science; he drew a strong distinction between archæology and "antiquarianism," and developed clearly the relations that must exist between archaeology, geology, and palæontology, in order to results of any established value. Then, reviewing the history of the science, in which he referred to the fact that the term "prehistoric" was first employed by the late Sir Daniel Wilson, President of the University of Toronto, he passed on to consider its scope. With regard to all questions of human remains or traces prior to the Glacial time, in the Pliocene or earlier, he could see no evidences at all trustworthy, and many elements of serious doubt. But, "when we return to palæolithic man," he said, "it is satisfactory to feel that we are treading on comparatively secure ground, and that the discoveries of the last forty years in Britain alone enable us to a great extent to reconstitute his history." He dwelt at length on the enormous amount of physical change that has taken place in the face of the country since the earlier palæolithic remains were deposited in the gravel beds and caves, and the immense lapse of time thereby indicated. Passing to the question of the origin of palæolithic man, he emphasized the view that he must have reached Britain and northern Europe by migration from a more genial climate, where food was more abundant and clothing less needful, rather than have originated in that inhospitable subarctic region. He then pointed out the wide diffusion of precisely similar implements to those of the Thames and the Somme Valleys, through numerous points of discovery in the Mediterranean region, into northern Africa southward even to Somaliland, and eastward through the valleys of the Nile and of the Euphrates to the Narbuddá Valley in India. Here they are associated with a Pleistocene fauna, closely akin to that of