294 
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
the old-world strata now exposed in the cup or hollow of 
the Weald. Mr Charles Dawson followed in his foot- 
steps ; for twenty years and more he has spent his 
leisure hours in searching the strata of the Weald, and 
has brought to light many things new to science. 
About the time he began to search the Weald a new 
influence was at work among the naturalists in the south- 
east corner of England. Lewes is situated on the south 
side of the green cup of the Weald ; on the other side of 
E S S£: X 
Fig. 95. — Sketch of the south-east corner of England, to show the Weald, the 
position of Piltdown, and the course of the Sussex Ouse, The former 
extension of the boundaries of the Weald to France is indicated. 
the cup, thirty miles north of Lewes, lies the Kentish 
village of Ightham, and it was here, in a grocer's shop, 
that the new influence had its mainspring — Mr Benjamin 
Harrison. He was a young man in 1859 when M. 
Boucher de Perthes was compelling his reluctant con- 
temporaries to acknowledge that the elaborately worked 
flints he had recovered from the ancient gravel terraces 
of the Somme, in the north-west of France, were the 
handiwork of long extinct races of man. Mr Harrison ^ 
1 For further details of Mr Harrison's busy life, see Ightluun : the Story 
of a Kentish Village, edited by F. G. Bennett, F.G.S., The Homeland 
Association, Ltd., London. Also Brit. Med.Journ., 1912, ii. p. 805. 
