24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.83 



Only one of these deserves to be dealt with in this place and that only 

 through the prominence given to it by one of the most distinguished 

 of American paleontologists, Henry Fairfield Osborn. The specimen 

 is the Foxhall jaw of southeastern England. 



In 1921, at the Washington meeting of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, Professor Oslx)rn expressed his belief that the Foxhall jaw 

 represented a Tertiary man. In the latter part of the same year he 

 wrote an article (published early in 1922) on " The Pliocene Man of 

 Foxhall in East Anglia," * in which he proclaimed his belief in traces 

 of Tertiary man at that locality, but was duly cautious about the jaw, 

 though evidently inclined to the opinion that, if found again, the 

 specimen (now lost) might prove of much value. 



During 1923-24, as a result of a visit to Foxhall and to the excava- 

 tion where the jaw was supiwsed to have been found, I undertook a 

 study of the find. At my request, Mr, Reid Moir furnished me with 

 all the known details of the discovery, and these, with the original 

 account of the find by Dr. R. H. Collyer and the results of my own 

 study, were published in the American Journal of Physical Anthro- 

 pology." The main ix)ints brought out are as follows : 



The " Foxhall jaw " was found in 1855, by workers excavating a 

 bed of " coprolites " near Ipswich, Suffolk. The specimen was pur- 

 chased from the finder by a local druggist, given by him to Sir 

 Thomas Beaver, in 1857 brought to the attention of Dr. Collyer, an 

 American physician in London. In 1863 Dr. Collyer exhibited the 

 bone to the Ethnological Society of London, and in 1867 published 

 a short account of it ' in which he plainly endeavors to establish the 

 jaw as very ancient. Eventually Dr. Collyer is believed to have re- 

 turned to America and probably to have taken the specimen with 

 him; but all further traces of the jaw are since lost. 



The only details concerning the circumstances of the find are those 

 given in a letter written eleven years after the discovery by J. Taylor, 

 the druggist, to Dr. Collyer. In this letter he says: 



The history of the matter, so far as I know, is very short. 



From what I could learn at the time, from the agricultural laborer of whom 

 I bought it, it came from the coprolite pit on the farm of Mr. Laws at Foxhall, 

 about four miles from Ipswich and was thrown out at Mr. Packard's manure 



* Nat. Hist., Vol. 21, pp. 565-576, New York, 1921. 



*Moir, J. Reid, The human jaw-bone found at Foxhall. .\mcr. Journ. Phys. 

 Anthrop., 1924, Vol. 7, pp. 409-416; Collyer, Robert H., The fossil human jaw 

 from Suffolk; ibid., pp. 117-120; and Hrdlicka, A., Critical notes on the Foxhall 

 jaw; ibid., pp. 420-424. 



' ,\nthrop. Rev., Vol. 5, pp. 331-339, London, 1867; republished as in preceding 

 note. 



