Vol. 69.] THE HUMAN SKULL. ETC. PROM PILTDOWN. 151 



which, would one day be dated with precision. Successive dis- 

 coveries justified the adoption of the French classification ; and 

 it was idle to decry or ignore the types and terminology that 

 made European archaeologists mutually intelligible, and in fact 

 constituted the grammar of prehistory. 



Mr. E. T. Newton called attention to the highly-mineralized 

 condition of the specimens, which seemed to point to their being of 

 Pliocene rather than of Pleistocene age. 



The President (Dr. A. Strahan) regretted that, owing to the 

 lateness of the hour, it had become necessary to close this inter- 

 esting discussion, and called upon the Authors to reply to the 

 points that had been raised. 



Mr. Dawson thanked the Fellows for their kind reception of his 

 paper and for their interesting discussion. 



He was quite prepared, from an anthropological point of view, to 

 accept an earlier date for the origin of the human remains, and 

 Dr. Woodward and he had perhaps erred on the side of caution in 

 placing the date as early Pleistocene. However, the stratigraphical 

 aspect of the occurrence, as a( present understood, compelled them 

 to suggest the comparatively later date for the human remains. 



The occurrence of certain Pliocene specimens in a considerably 

 rolled condition, while the human remains bore little traces of 

 rolling, suggested a difference as to age, but not to the extent 

 of excluding the possibility of their being coeval. The rolled 

 specimens might have entered the stream farther up the river 

 than the human remains, and thus might have drifted into the hole 

 or pocket, in the river-bed, where they were found, during the 

 same age but in different condition. Then, again, the skull might 

 have been surrounded by some colloid material which preserved it 

 in its passage from some earlier deposit. It must be admitted that 

 any attempt to fix an exact geological date for specimens found in 

 a gravel-bed is fraught with difficulties. 



He expressed his thanks to Mr. S. A. Woodhead for his analyses ; 

 to Dr. Edgar Willett for kind assistance in tracing the gravel ; 

 and to Mr. Iiuskin Butterfield and Mr. A. W. Pigott for the loan of 

 implements found at Fairlight. 



In conclusion, Mr. Dawson expressed his intention of offering 

 the specimens as a gift to the Trustees of the British Museum. 



Dr. Smith "Woodward admitted that the restoration of the 

 symphysial end of the mandible exhibited was a bold experiment, 

 but he failed at present to conceive of any other interpretation 

 of the fossil. Itemembering the failure of Mrs. Selenka's great 

 excavations in Java where Pithecanthropus was discovered, he did. 

 not anticipate certain success in future work at Piltdown, but he 

 hoped to take part in further diggings. He did not think that the 

 differences between the Heidelberg and the Piltdown mandibles 

 necessarily implied differences of geological age. The swamps and 

 forests of the Weald in early Pleistocene times may have been a 

 refuge for a backward race. 



Q. J. G. S. No. 274. m 



