of the association, were many of the foremost scientific workers in this country. Among these may be mentioned Profs. Morse, Newcomb, Remsen, Hadley, Putnam, and Chamberlin. A few associate members came from foreign countries. The Canadians contributed their quota of men of distinction, and altogether the gathering partook to a pleasing extent of an international character.
As usual, on such occasions, liberal provision of time was made for social hospitalities and semiscientific excursions; but the serious business of the association was well kept in view. The inaugural address of the incoming president, Sir John Evans, consisted of a plea for the recognition of archæology as entitled to a place among the sciences. He had no difficulty in showing the aid which the archæologist is able at times to render to the geologist, and also the assistance it affords toward a scientific treatment of history. His account of the evidence accumulated within the last thirty or forty years as to the antiquity of the human race was clear and succinct. He did not consider the existence of man in Miocene times proved, but he spoke of the "almost incredible length of time "occupied by the Palæolithic period. "We may not know,"' he said, "the exact geological period when palæolithic man first settled in Britain; but we have good evidence that he occupied it at a time when the configuration of the surface was entirely different from what it is at present; when the river valleys had not been cut down to anything like their existing depth; and when the fauna of the country was of a totally different character from that of the present day." The time covered by that period was sufficient, he stated, to permit of "the erosion of valleys, miles in width, to a depth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet. . . . When we take into consideration," he added, "the almost inconceivable ages that, even under the most favorable conditions, the excavation of wide and deep valleys by river action implies, the remoteness of the date at which the Palæolithic period had its beginning almost transcends our powers of imagination." Sir John Evans speaks with the authority of a man deeply versed in geology as well as in archæology, and it is safe to assume that he speaks within bounds.
Among the Presidential Addresses to the Sections were several that were weighty and valuable. Prof. Michael Foster reviewed most instructively the progress of physiological science in the dozen years that had elapsed since the association had last met in Canada. He sounded a not unneeded note of warning against allowing commercial considerations to predominate in questions of research. "There is an increasing risk," he declared, "of men undertaking a research not because a question is crying out to them to be answered, but in the hope that the publication of their results may win for them a lucrative post." A greater evil still, he considered, was the locking up of scientific discoveries for the private enrichment of the men who had made them. Another observation of general value was to the effect that scientific controversy is never wholly valueless, since "the tribunal to which the combatants of both sides appeal is sure to give a true judgment in the end." The great progress, he stated, that had been made in the study of the conditions and aspects of life in the higher animal forms had rendered much more hopeful the study of life in its lowest and most generalized forms; so that there is good reason to anticipate that "in the immediately near future a notable advance will be
