I deem no apology due for introducing to the notice of the Royal Society the subject of the present paper. The close and accurate criticism which distinguishes modern scholarship has allied all branches of knowledge in a common scientific system; and the laws which regulate the development of human society are now recognised as being not less inexorable than those of which the operation on material objects is the more frequent theme in this room. To exhume the forms and types of ancient society, to subject them to close analysis, to identify their prototypes and trace their evolution in our modern life is not less a scientific study than to dig out the nodules of remote ages from those ancient records the rocks, and to subject them to that analysis which detects their identity with forms of life still extant. But with this difference in our present inquiry : the forms of existence of which the nodule is the representative have transmitted their characteristics through so great a succession and variety of forms as to make their identity with, or even relation to, any modern type distinguishable in most cases only by subtle processes of analysis; they are themselves callous and dead, and have no direct contact with the life of the present day; but the systems of ancient society have not undergone that process of extinction and disintegration in transmitting their characteristics; it is less in the alembic that decomposes than by the scalpel that exposes, that their characteristics are discoverable; they do touch, and that often closely, the living present, and there is danger therefore that in the search for ancient truth a nerve may be sometimes touched that may send a thrill into living organisms in our modern society, aflame as some of these are at present with fevered sensation and debate.