434 Mr Duckworth, Note on the Dispersive Power 



Note on the Dispersive Power of Running Water on Skeletons : 

 with particular reference to the Skeletal Remains of Pithecan- 

 thropus erectus. By W. L. H. Duckworth, M.A., Jesus College. 



[Bead 19 May 1902.] 



Among the objections raised against the acceptance of Dr 

 Dubois' view as to the nature of the fossil bones found by him 

 in Java and ascribed to an animal form intermediate between the 

 apes and Man (Pithecanthropus erectus), there was one which dis- 

 puted the community of origin of the several remains : it was 

 urged in fact that sioce the distance separating the calvaria (skull- 

 cap) and the femur was 48 ft. 9 in. (15 metres), the two bones 

 could not have belonged to the same individual. Now it is very 

 important, if not essential, for Dr Dubois' theory that the two 

 bones should be regarded as having formed part of the same 

 skeleton, and the objection was met by the response that ex- 

 perience would shew that the distance by which they were 

 separated is not too great to preclude the possibility of their 

 possessing a common origin in a single skeleton. It must be 

 further explained that the remains were discovered in the bank 

 of a river even now of considerable size, and that Dr Dubois 

 suggests that crocodiles probably played a part in securing the 

 dispersion of the bones of many of the animals which perished 

 in the much larger Pliocene representative of the modern Solo 

 river. 



The object in view in the present account is to suggest that 

 a stream of much smaller volume than the Solo river is capable 

 of dispersing remains of skeletons over a distance considerably 

 greater than the fifty feet or so required by Dr Dubois' theory. 

 Incidentally two other points are illustrated by the specimens 

 used in demonstration of this proposition. 



In the northern part of Carnarvonshire there is a large 

 marshy tract of upland some hundreds of acres in extent, situated 

 immediately to the south-east of Penmaenmawr. This marshy 

 plateau is drained by several mountain streams, the general 

 direction of which is roughly east by north. While walking over 

 this eastern versant in the spring of 1901, I noticed a number 

 of bones of animals dispersed along the line, and in the bed, of 



