66 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 83 

 , Supplementary Note on the Discovery of a Palaeolithic Human Skull 



and Mandible at Piltdown (Sussex). Ibid., Vol. 70, pp. 82-99, 1914. 

 — , On a Bone Implement from Piltdown (Sussex). Ibid., Vol. 71, Pt. i, 



pp. 143-149, 1915- 

 Woodward, Arthur Smith, The Piltdown Man. Geol. Mag., London, Decade V, 



Vol. 10, No. 592, pp. 433-434, 1913- 

 , On a Second Skull from the Piltdown Gravel. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 



Vol. 73, Pt. I, pp. i-io, 1917. 



, Fourth Note on the Piltdown Gravel. Ibid., 1917. 



, A Guide to the Fossil Remains of Man in the Department of Geology 



and Palaeontology, British Museum (Nat. Hist.), ist ed., 1915, 3d ed., 

 1922. 



During the 15 years since the first report, a whole literature has 

 grown up ahout these finds, due to their fragmentary condition, their 

 insufficiency for definite conclusions, and the most disturbing ap- 

 parent morphological incongruity of the specimens. It is another case 

 where a desire to reach conclusions from insufficient and problematic 

 material has led to a cloud of speculation and opinion, where sub- 

 stantial definite deductions are impossible. 



As with the Pithecanthropus, so with the Eoanthropus, both in 

 the discoveries and in subsequent history, there is much romance and 

 psychology, besides prehistory. 



The preservation of the find is due essentially to Mr. Dawson ; and 

 its history illustrates the usefulness and need, especially in the Old 

 World, of scientific supervision of excavations. Mr. Dawson's origi- 

 nal statement is as follows (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1913, Vol. 69, 

 pp. 117 et seq.) : 



Several years ago I was walking along a farm road close to Piltdown Com- 

 mon, Fletching (Sussex), when I noticed that the road had been mended with 

 some peculiar brown flints not usual in the district. On inquiry I was aston- 

 ished to learn that they were dug from a gravel bed on the farm, and shortly 

 afterwards I visited the place, where two laborers were at work digging the 

 gravel for small repairs to the roads. As this excavation was situated about 

 four miles north of the limit where the occurrence of flints overlying the 

 Wealden strata is recorded I was much interested and made a close examina- 

 tion of the bed. I asked the workmen if they had found bones or other fossils 

 there. As they did not appear to have noticed anything of the sort, I urged 

 them to preserve anything that they might find. Upon one of my subsequent 

 visits to the pit, one of the men handed to me a small portion of an unusually 

 thick human parietal bone.^ I immediately made a search, but could find noth- 

 ing more nor had the men noticed anything else. The bed is full of tabular 

 pieces of ironstone closely resembling this piece of skull in color and thickness ; 

 and, although I made many subsequent searches, I could not hear of any further 

 find nor discover anything — in fact, the bed seemed to be quite unfossiliferous. 



^ The men are said to have found the whole or nearly whole brain portion 

 of the skull, to have taken it for a petrified " cocoanut," and to have broken it. 



