PRIMITIVE MAN- IN CHINA SMITH 533 



Then again the question of the geological age of the fossils has 

 been a subject of controversy. When Doctor Dubois first discovered 

 the fossils he was impressed by the fact that the associated mam- 

 malian remains seemed to be identical with types which occur in the 

 Pliocene beds in the Indian SiAvaliks. Hence he regarded the fossils 

 as evidence of the former existence in Java of Tertiary man. The 

 further study of these remains, and in particular the gradual ac- 

 cumulation of knowledge regarding the fossil mammalia of Asia, 

 have since convinced most paleontologists that the age of the Java 

 fossils is Pleistocene and not Pliocene. Two years ago (February 22, 

 1929) Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president of the American 

 Museum in New York, called attention (Science, vol. 69, p. 216) to 

 certain facts, which had impressed Professor Dietrich of Berlin and 

 himself, that the proboscidean and other mammalian remains asso- 

 ciated with the human fossils belong not to the Early Pleistocene 

 but to the Middle Pleistocene Age, suggesting that the Ape man of 

 Java was relatively much more recent than had hitherto been 

 supposed. 



The total result of these discussions is that the precise age and the 

 significance of the fossils found by Doctor Dubois 40 years ago are 

 still matters of lively controversy and considerable doubt. 



Nearly 30 years ago the late Mr. Charles Dawson, a lawyer 

 practising at Lewes in Sussex, who had then devoted more than 30 

 years of his life to the hobby of hunting for fossil remains of ex- 

 tinct animals in the Weald of Sussex, was attending a land court at 

 the Manor of Barkham near Piltdown, when he noticed the road 

 leading up to the manor house being repaired with flint. During 

 the sitting of the manorial court over which he was presiding, in- 

 stead of giving the whole of his attention to the legal business in 

 hand, he was unable to restrain his roving fancies from wondering 

 why people should be using such poor material as flint to repair a 

 road when, as he thought, the cost of bringing it from the nearest 

 source known to him, which was more than 5 miles away, would have 

 been almost sufficient to have paid for proper road metal. Hence, 

 as soon as the court rose for lunch he went out to make further en- 

 quiries, and discovered from the workmen that the reason why flint 

 was being used was that it was present on the spot. The road itself 

 crossed the small patch of gravel which the men were digging up to 

 mend it. Mr. Dawson instructed the workmen to keep a lookout for 

 any fossil remains which they might find in this bed of gravel, and 

 from time to time, whenever any excavation was going on, he vis- 

 ited Barldiam Manor to keep a watch on the excavation. 



Years afterwards he visited the spot to find the workmen, in defi- 

 ance of the instructions he had given them, throwing stones at what 



