146 Notes on the Geological Position of the Human 
these most interesting skeletons lies not in their antiquity,— 
though they are both unquestionably entitled to be considered 
prehistoric,—but in their strange anatomical peculiarities, 
and in the fact that these peculiarities are nearly identical in 
each. As regards racial affinities, both the Neanderthal and 
Tilbury men are evidently most nearly akin physically to the 
robust, but coarse-featured, people of the round barrows of 
S.W. England, and of the Bronze Age, who are known to 
have been characterised by large frontal sinuses and supra¬ 
orbital ridges, and are considered by Mr. Elton and others to 
have been of the Finnish or Ugrian stock. And this view as 
to their race and period gives them just that measure of 
antiquity that is suggested by the positions in which the two 
skeletons were found. 
Note (Septembek, 1884). 
Sir Richard Owen’s work on the Antiquity of Man as 
deduced from the Tilbury skeleton—an enlargement of his 
Royal Society paper—being now published (August, 1884), 
we have the advantage of an authentic exposition of his views. 
The book is admirably illustrated, and the Neanderthal-like 
appearance of the Tilbury skull is very strikingly shown. 
It is evident, however, that the illustrious and venerable 
naturalist has never visited the Docks himself. Consequently 
he does not appreciate the difference of age between the older 
alluvial deposits of the Thames Valley (in which Mr. Worth¬ 
ington Gr. Smith has found so many Palaeolithic implements) 
and the newer alluvium of Tilbury, as he would otherwise 
have done, but considers that in the Tilbury skeleton we have 
the first unquestionably Palaeolithic bones of Man yet dis¬ 
covered. I am glad to be able to state that Mr. Worthington 
Smith’s opinion as to the age of the Tilbury skeleton coincides 
with my own. 
In the section of strata sent to Sir R. Owen by Mr. Donald 
Baynes, one of the engineers superintending the Dock exca¬ 
vations, the only inaccuracy in the newspaper accounts worth 
noting is corrected. The skeleton appears to have been found 
not at a depth of 32 ft., and at the top of the sand, but at 
