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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. 
\Read 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 since 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 
