324 Notes and Comments. 
lem. The antiquity of man—or, in other words, his place in the: 
geological record—is a geological question to be decided, like 
all others, on the lines of a rigid induction. In each case it is. 
necessary to prove not only that the objects are of human 
origin, but further that they are of the same age as the strata 
in which they occur, without the possibility of their having 
been introduced at a later time. The Pliocene age of man in 
East Anglia is founded entirely on the roughly chipped flints 
in the basal Phocene strata—on eoliths, mainly of the rostro- 
carinate or eagle’s-beak type of Moir and Lankester. It has 
been ampiy proved in this country by Warren, Haward, and 
Sollas, and in France by Boule, Breuil, and Cartailhac, that 
these can be made without the intervention of man by the 
pressure and movement of the surface deposits, by the action 
of ice, by the torrents and rivers, and by the dash of the waves 
on the shore. The type specimens taken to be of human work 
have been selected out of a large series of broken flints that 
graduate into forms obviously made by natural fractures. They 
are, as Boule aptly says, ‘ hypersélectionnées,’ and can only 
be rightly interpreted by their relation to the other flints on the 
Pliocene shore-lne. 
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE IN BRITAIN. 
‘As might be expected, if they are due to natural causes, the 
“ rostro-carinates’’ are widely distributed through the basal 
beds of the crag in Norfolk and Suffolk. They occur also in 
the Upper Miocenes of Puy-Courny (Auvergne), in the Pleisto- 
cene gravels of London, and the present shore-line of Selsey, 
where they are now probably being made by the breakers. For 
these reasons I agree with M. Boule that they have not been 
proved to have been made by man, and that therefore they 
throw no light on his place in the geological record. The 
presence of man in East Anglia during the Glacial period is 
founded on even worse evidence than this. The Ipswich 
skeleton on which Moir and Keith base their speculations was 
obtained from a shallow pit sunk through the surace soil of 
decalcified boulder clay—not of boulder clay im situ, as stated— 
into the Glacial sand that crops out on the valley slope. It is, 
in my opinion, a case of interment that may be of any age from 
the neolithic to modern times. The skeleton also is of modern 
type, and belongs, as Duckworth shows, to the graveyard series. 
of burials.’ 
PILTDOWN REMAINS. 
“We come now to the consideration of the evidence of the 
famous discovery on Piltdown of Eo-anthropus Dawsoni—the 
missing link between primitive man and the higher apes. After 
the examination of the whole group of remains, and a study of 
the section, I fully accept Dr. Smith Woodward’s opinion that 
Naturalist, 
