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 (September, 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 G. 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 E. 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 82 ft., and at the top of the sand, but at