iS) 
Notes and Comments. 
THE EARLIEST HUMAN SKULL, 
What are apparently believed to be the oldest remains of 
man found in England, if not in the world, were recently 
exhibited at a Meeting of the Geological Society, and described 
by their discoverer, Mr. C. Dawson, and Dr. A. Smith Woodward, 
of the British Museum. They were obtained at Fletching, 
Sussex, with remains of elephant, hippopotamus, red deer, 
horse, and beaver. The human remains consisted of a skull 
and mandible, and flint implements of a primitive type were 
also found. 
AND ITS APE-LIKE CHARACTERISTICS. 
Dr. Woodward said the skull was very different from 
that of any class of man hitherto met with. It had the 
steep forehead of a modern man with scarcely any brow 
ridges, and the only external appearance of antiquity 
was found in the occiput, which showed that in this early form 
the neck was shaped, not like that of a modern man, but more 
like that of an ape. The brain capacity was only about two- 
thirds of that of an ordinary modern man. So far as it was 
preserved, the mandible differed remarkably from that of man 
and agreed exactly with the mandible of a young chimpanzee. 
It still bore two of the molar teeth, which were human in 
shape ; if these were removed it would be impossible to decide 
that the jaw was human at all. The skull differed so much from 
those of the cave-men already found in Germany, Belgium, and 
France that it was difficult at first sight to interpret it. 
CHARACTERISTICS OF CAVE-MEN. 
All the cave-men hitherto found were characterised by very 
low foreheads and very prominent brow ridges resembling those 
of the full-grown modern ape. The new specimen was proved 
by geological considerations to be very much older than the 
remains of these cave-men. It was interesting to note in this 
connection that the new skull was closely similar in shape to 
that of a very young chimpanzee, while—as he had mentioned— 
the skull of the later cave-men had the brows of the full-grown 
chimpanzee. Therefore the changes which took place in the 
shape of the skull in successive races of early men were exactly 
similar to the changes which took place in the skull of an ape 
as it grew from youth to maturity. He inclined, therefore, 
to the theory that the cave-man was a degenerate offshoot of 
early man, and probably became extinct, while surviving 
modern man might have arisen directly from the primitive 
source of which the Piltdown skull provided the first discovered 
evidence. 
RVlAPs 
We have to record the decease of the Sheffield Junior 
Naturalists’ Society and the Hull Society of Natural Science, 
Naturalist, 
