ANTIQUITY OF THE PILTDOWN RACE 313 
occur in the region of the English Channel. If one 
looks at a map representing the bounds of England in 
late Pliocene times — the date at which we suppose the 
Piltdown man to have lived — it will be seen (fig. 99) that 
in place of the English Channel there is a great river 
which was joined by all the streams issuing from the 
southern area of the Weald. It will be seen, too, that 
the Somme and the Seine also lie within the watershed 
of the great channel river. Now on a tributary of the 
Seine is situated St Prest, near which there is, as 
Fio. 99.— Map of South England and North France, to show the course 
and tributaries of the ancient channel river (after Boyd Dawkins). 
M. Rutot has indicated, a deposit very similar in nature 
and in age to that at Piltdown. We have already seen 
that the deeper strata of gravel at St Prest contain 
remains of Pliocene animals and have always been 
regarded as of a Pliocene age (see fig. 80, p. 231). Over 
the Pliocene beds are others of a later or Pleistocene age, 
just as at Piltdown. So long ago as 1863, M. Desnoyers^ 
recognised that many of the fossil bones of animals 
existing in the Pliocene period, and found in the deepest 
and oldest deposits of St Prest, showed definite evi- 
1 M. J. Desnoyers, Compt. rend., 1863, vol. Ivi. p. 1073. See also 
references given on p. 232. 
