CHAPTER XVIIl 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE PILTDOWN SKULL 
England owes much to the disciples of Gilbert White. 
Everywhere, especially within her southern parts, you 
will find them observing and recording those strange 
facts which, when rightly understood, will carry our 
island story leagues beyond the dawn of written history. 
The little jealouL^'es and disputes which occasionally ruffle 
the serenity of their lives leave untouched the splendid 
freemasonry which binds them together, and which knows 
no distinction of class. The lord of the manor and the 
village shoemaker meet at this point on equal terms. Those 
local historians are drawn from all classes ; the squire, the 
vicar, the lawyer, the doctor, the bank clerk, the watchmaker, 
the grocer, the baker, and the village labourer all enroll 
themselves amongst the followers of the immortal Gilbert. 
It is to one of these men we owe the finding of the 
Piltdown skull, which, from a historical point of view, is 
the most important and instructive of all ancient human 
documents yet discovered in Europe. Mr Charles 
Dawson, its discoverer, a lawyer by profession, lives in 
the historic town of Lewes, situated picturesquely in a 
c^ap of the South Downs where the Sussex Ouse breaks 
through from the Weald and empties its silent waters in 
the English Channel at Newhaven (fig. 95). It is just in 
such a quiet town as Lewes that we expect followers of 
Gilbert White to appear. It was in Lewes that Dr Gideon 
Mantell practised as a physician in the earlier part of 
last century, and spent his leisure time in making known 
to all the world the remarkable reptiles which abound in 
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