viiT Proceedings. [Novemberi8th,igij. 



While agreeing with practically all that Mr. Sutcliffe wrote in 

 his memoir, Professor Elliot Smith criticized his phylogenetic 

 scheme published as Plate I. 



Professor Elliot Smith then proceeded to explain the nature 

 of the controversies concerning other bearings of the Piltdown 

 discovery on the history of ancient man: — (i) The age of the 

 remains; (2), the question of the association of the jaw and the 

 skull ; (3), the significance of the jaw and teeth and the recon- 

 struction of the missing parts ; (4), the reconstruction of the 

 brain-cast and the nature of the brain; and (5), the place which 

 Eoanthropus should occupy in the phylogeny of the Hominidae. 



(i) As regards the age — whether the fragments are Pleisto- 

 cene or Pliocene — he said it was practically certain that they are 

 of the Pleistocene date. 



(2) That the jaw and cranial fragments found in the neigh- 

 bourhood belonged to the same creature there had never been any 

 doubt on the part of those who have seriously studied the 

 matter. There is definite internal evidence that the jaw is not 

 really an ape's ; the teeth it bears are human, and the skull, 

 although human, is much more primitive than any skull assigned 

 to the genus Homo. This association of skull and jaw is precisely 

 of the kind which on a priori grounds we should expect in an 

 ancestral type of man. 



(3) The reconstruction of the jaw and teeth has now been 

 practically settled once for all by the subsequent discovery of 

 the canine tooth. 



(4) With regard to the reconstruction of the skull, Professor 

 Elliot Smith thought there was no longer any room for doubt as 

 to the position the fragments originally occupied in the skull, 

 and he considered it highly improbable that the complete brain- 

 cast could be more than iioo cc. in capacity. He tiiought he 

 was justified in saying that this was a maximum estimate. 



(5) Referring to the position of Eoatithropus in relation to 

 the ancestral tree of man, he was of opinion that there could be 

 no question of the ample justification for putting the Piltdown 

 remains into a genus separate from all the other Hominidae, for 



