4 Dr. A. Smith Woodward — Early Man. 



caverns. While scrambling through the cavern of Castillo, near 

 Puente Viesgo (Santander), with Mr. Alcalde del Rio in 1910, when 

 its exploration had only been begun, my wife and I had the 

 opportunity of appreciating, not only the skill of the Palaeolithic 

 artists, but also the patience of those who have during recent years 

 made so many faithful copies of their work for publication. Professor 

 Obermaier devotes two pages to a discussion of the authenticity of 

 these drawings and paintings, which can only be necessary for 

 readers who have not had the privilege of seeing and considering the 

 originals. 



It becomes increasingly clear that man did not reach America until 

 he had attained the grade of Homo sapiens, and both Professor Osborn 

 and Professor Obermaier omit the discussion of American fossil man 

 from their story. It can merely be stated that there is evidence both 

 in North and South America of the presence of typical man among 

 the remains of Pleistocene mammals which are now extinct. An 

 interesting case has lately been recorded in the United States. 1 In 

 remote parts of the Old World, however, important discoveries of 

 early man are more hopeful, for only so recently as 1914 a well- 

 fossilized human skull was found in a river deposit containing 

 Pleistocene mammals at Talgai in the Darling Downs, Queensland. 

 It was exhibited to the British Association meeting in Sydney by 

 Professor Edge worth David and Professor Smith, and it is shortly to 

 be described in a memoir submitted to the Royal Society of London. 

 Photographs of the specimen were shown to the Geological Society 

 of London on December 1, 1915. 2 Although in nearly every respect 

 the skull of a typical Australian aborigine, this fossil agrees with 

 Eoanthropus from Piltdown in having the relatively large canine 

 teeth interlocking as in the apes, and it is the only known skull of 

 Homo exhibiting this arrangement. The upper canines are typical 

 permanent teeth merely enlarged and modified ; the lower canines 

 (still undiscovered) were therefore probably also of the permanent 

 pattern, and thus differed from those of the more primitive 

 Eoanthropus which, as already mentioned, are shaped like the modern 

 human milk-teeth. 



The unravelling of the story of early man is indeed a continual 

 struggle with the fragmentary evidence of casual discoveries. Much 

 of it still consists in the balancing of probabilities. The value of the 

 influence of attractive summaries like those before us, adapted for the 

 general reader as well as the specialist, cannot therefore be too highly 

 estimated. No one can tell how and where their influence may 

 preserve the next important discovery from thoughtless destruction. 



1 E. H. Sellards, " On the Discovery of Fossil Human Remains in Florida 

 in association with Extinct Vertebrates " : Amer. Journ. Sci. [4], vol. xlii, 

 pp. 1-18, with figs., 1916. 



2 Geol. Mag., Dec. VI, Vol. Ill, p. 44, January, 1916. 



