314 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
dence of having been worked by man. More striking 
still, the land on which these deposits occur is 80 feet 
above the adjoining tributary of the Seine, the Eure- 
et-Loir, the same height as the Piltdown deposits lie 
above the Ouse. The Pliocene age of the St Prest 
deposits has never been called in question. 
There is a further striking similarity between the 
deeper deposits at St Prest and the dark bed at Piltdown. 
Mention has been made of the eoliths which occurred 
with the human remains in the dark bed. Shaped flints 
of a corresponding type also occur in the Pliocene beds 
at St Prest. They were discovered and described by 
a geologist, M. Bourgeois,^ in 1867, four years after 
M. Desnoyers recognised the human markings on the 
fossil bones. In M. Rutot's opinion the St Prest 
implements are of a later and more highly evolved type 
than the Kentish eoliths. The discoveries made at St 
Prest fifty years ago have a very direct bearing on the 
problem of the age of the Piltdown remains. 
The evidence of another Pliocene deposit may be 
cited here. In the south of England, about one hundred 
miles to the west of Piltdown, but still within the water- 
shed of the old channel river, there occurs another 
trace of the Pliocene period which is of the greatest 
importance to the student of man's evolution. This 
trace occurs at Dewlish, a small village in the chalky 
uplands of Dorset (fig. 99). Near the village of Dewlish 
the chalk plateau, about 300 feet above sea-level, ends 
in a sharp bank or escarpment, about 100 feet in height, 
similar to the chalk brim of the Weald. On this plateau, 
near Dewlish, there was discovered by accident a deep 
trench cut in the chalk and filled with layers of sand and 
gravel. The trench was investigated by the Rev. O. 
Fisher, and has been described by him in two com- 
munications to the Geological Society of London." It 
1 See Paliontologie humaine, by E. T. Hamy, Paris, 1870, p. 98. 
2 Quart. Joicrn. GeoL, 1888, vol. xliv. p. 819; 1905, vol. Ixi. p. 35. 
Since the above was written, the Dorset Field Club has reopened the 
trench. The evidence is in favour of a natural — not human — formation. 
