THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



207 



Condv/e Sigmoid notch 

 which hinges 

 fhejatvto 



Jlj'cending 



2"~mo/ar^ 



Canine 



f/lC(S0/* 



..-Chm 



Jaw of Eoanthropus daicsoni. 



that some four years ago Mr. Dawson 

 noticed that a road had been recently 

 mended by peculiar flints, and on 

 tracing them to their source, he found 

 that the laborers had dug out an object 

 looking like a cocoa-nut, which they 

 had thrown on a rubbish heap. This 

 proved to be part of a human skull, 

 and excavations of the undisturbed 

 gravel where it was found discovered 

 part of the jaw bone. A somewhat 

 absurd cablegram was sent the news- 

 papers in this country reporting the 

 discovery of a fossil man who could 

 reason before he could speak. But it 

 is the case that the cranium is on the 

 whole human in its characteristics, 

 while the jaw tends to be simian. 



A restoration of the jaw by Dr. W. 

 P. Pycraft, of the British Museum, is 

 here given, and a more fanciful recon- 

 struction of the primitive man, drawn 

 under his direction by Mr. Forestier 

 for the Illustrated London News. The 

 remains were found on a plateau 80 

 feet above the river bed, to which ex- 

 tent denudation had taken place since 

 the gravel was formed. In it were also 

 found the remains of extinct mammals 

 and many water-worn, iron-stained flint 

 artifacts, to which the term eoliths has 

 been applied. The gravel is early 

 pleistocene, near enough to pliocene to 

 make it almost certain that the imme- 

 diate ancestors of the pleistocene man 

 must have lived during that period. 



The cranium is fragmentary, but 

 typically human, with a capacity of 

 over a thousand cubic centimeters, indi- 

 cating a brain about four fifths that of 

 the average European and twice as 



large as that of the highest apes. The . 

 bones are remarkably thick and the 

 temporal muscles extend higher up on 

 the skull than in any recent or fossil 

 man. The jaw bears some resemblance 

 to the Heidelberg jaw, but it is less 

 massive, with a still more negative 

 chin and other simian features. As 

 restored it is much like that of the 

 chimpanzee. Dr. Woodward regards 

 the remains as belonging not only to 

 a hitherto unknown species, but has 

 erected for it a new genus to which the 

 name Eoanthropus dawsoni has been 

 given. Becent discoveries prove that 

 primitive man at a period from one 

 hundred thousand to a million years 

 ago was widely spread over Europe 

 and apparently as far as Java, and 

 that different species and perhaps 

 genera may have lived simultaneously 

 in different regions. 



THE SEALS OF THE PBIBILOF 

 ISLANDS 



President Taft has sent a special 

 message to the congress recommending 

 the repeal of the law passed on Febru- 

 ary 15 of last year prohibiting the 

 killing of seals on the Pribilof Islands 

 for five years. His recommendation 

 and that of the experts of the govern- 

 ment should certainly be followed by 

 the congress. A clear statement of the 

 whole situation, drawn up by Dr. David 

 Starr Jordan and Mr. G. A. Clark, has 

 been recently given out by the Bureau 

 of Fisheries of the Department of Com- 

 merce and Labor. The Pribilof Islands 

 in Bering Sea came into the possession 

 of the United States in 1867, and our 



