538 AlfNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 31 



admiration for his wonderful imagination which enabled him to 

 make this amazingly accurate prediction, which the discoveries of 

 the last five years in China have so amply corroborated. 



This brilliant forecast was made in 1903, but nothing further was 

 done towards the realization of it until the year 1921, when Prof. 

 J. Gunnar Andersson, the Swedish geologist who was acting as the 

 Adviser to the Geological Survey of China, was directed to a deposit 

 of fossil bones at Chou Kou Tien through overhearing the chatter 

 of his native workmen. When he started to examine the rich de- 

 posit of fossil bones in the cave at Chou Kou Tien he found amongst 

 these remains a piece of quartz, and at once remarked to his assist- 

 ants, " This is primitive man," implying by that statement that 

 as quartz did not naturally occur in this spot, some early Pleisto- 

 cene human agency must have been responsible for its presence 

 among the bones which he was examining. In a way this inference 

 is almost as remarkable as that which Professor Schlosser had made 

 over 20 years previously. 



The funds available for the Chinese Geological Service were inad- 

 equate to carry out the examination of these fossils with the thor- 

 oughness which their importance merited, but Doctor Andersson 

 obtained from Mr. Ivar Kreuger, of Stockholm, financial aid which 

 enabled the investigations to be continued and extended. 



The material obtained from Doctor Zdansky's excavations at Chou 

 Kou Tien in 1922 was taken to Professor Wiman's laboratory in 

 Upsala for examination; and in 1926, on the occasion of the visit 

 of the Crown Prince of Sweden to Peking it was announced that 

 two human teeth had been found, an immature left lower molar, and 

 a somewhat worn adult right upper premolar. 



In the Bulletin of the Geological Society of China, volume 5, 

 Nos. 3-^, page 284, 1927, Doctor Zdansky gave an account of these 

 teeth, the concluding two paragraphs of which I quote in his own 

 words : 



Granted the human origin of the teeth, there arises the question of their 

 relation to the living and prehistoric races of man. ... 1 am indeed con- 

 vinced that the existing material provides a wholly inadequate foundation for 

 many of the various theories based upon it. As every fresh discovery of what 

 may be human remains is of such great interest not only to the scientist but 

 also to the layman, it follows only too naturally that it becomes at once the 

 object of the most detailed — and, in my opinion, too detailed — investigation. 

 I decline absolutely to venture any far-reaching conclusions regarding the ex- 

 tremely meagre material described here, and which, I think, can not be more 

 closely identified than as Homo sp. 



The above has been written largely because I find I am credited, in certain 

 quarters, with the discovery of the "Peking man" (vide daily newspapers), 

 which is supposed to be of Tertiary age. Leaving until a future date the 

 publication of a detailed description of the fossil fauna from Chou Kou Tien, 



