"Vol. 69.] DISCOVERY OF A PALEOLITHIC HUMAN SKULL IN SUSSEX. 117 



8. On the Discovert, of a Paleolithic Human Skull and Mandible 

 in a Flint-bearing Gravel overlying the Wealden (Hastings 

 Beds) at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex). By Charles Dawson, 

 F.S.A., F.G.S., and Arthur Smith Woodward, LL.D., F.B.S., 

 Sec.G.S. With an Appendix hy Prof. Grafton Elliot Smith, 

 M.A., M.D., F.B.S. (Bead December 18th, 1912.) 



I. Geology and Flint-Implements. [C. D.] 



[Plates XV-XVIL] 



Several years ago I was walking along a farm-road close to 

 Piltdown Common, Fletching (Sussex), when I noticed that the 

 road had been mended with some peculiar brown flints not usual 

 in the district. On enquiry I was astonished to learn that they 

 were dug from a gravel-bed on the farm, and shortly afterwards 

 I visited the place, where two labourers were at work digging the 

 gravel for small repairs to the roads. As this excavation was 

 situated about 4 miles north of the limit where the occurrence 

 of flints overlying the AVealden strata is recorded, I was much 

 interested, and made a close examination of the bed. I asked the 

 workmen if they had found bones or other fossils there. As they 

 did not appear to have noticed anything of the sort, I urged them 

 to preserve anything that they might find. Upon one of my sub- 

 sequent visits to the pit, one of the men handed to me a small 

 portion of an unusually thick human parietal bone. I immediately 

 made a search, but could find nothing more, nor had the men 

 noticed anything else. The bed is full of tabular pieces of iron- 

 stone closely resembling this piece of skull in colour and thickness ; 

 and, although I made many subsequent searches, I could not hear 

 of any further find nor discover anything — in fact, the bed seemed 

 to be quite unfossiliferous. 



It was not until some years later, in the autumn of 1911, on a 

 visit to the spot, that I picked up, among the rain-washed spoil- 

 heaps of the gravel-pit, another and larger piece belonging to the 

 frontal region of the same skull, including a portion of the left 

 superciliary ridge. As I had examined a cast of the Heidelberg 

 jaw, it occurred to me that the proportions of this skull were 

 similar to those of that specimen. I accordingly took it to Dr. A. 

 Smith Woodward at the British Museum (Natural History) for 

 comparison and determination. He was immediately impressed 

 Avith the importance of the discovery, and we decided to employ 

 labour and to make a systematic search among the spoil-heaps 

 and gravel, as soon as the floods had abated ; for the gravel-pit is 

 more or less under water during five or six months of the year. 

 We accordingly gave up as much time as we could spare since last 

 spring (1912), and completely turned over and sifted what spoil- 



