WCP6232

Letter (WCP6232.7214)

[1]1

BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL HISTORY),

CROMWELL ROAD,

LONDON, S.W.

Dec[ember]. 4th. 1916.

Dear Sir,

In reply to your enquiry a plaster copy of the Piltdown jaw2 can be purchased from R. F. Damon3, Weymouth. I do not know whether he can also supply a copy of the Heidelberg jaw4, but I have asked him to send par- [2] ticulars to you,

Yours sincerely | A. Smith Woodward5. [signature]

W. G. Wallace6, Esq[uire].

1
The page is numbered WP16/1/139 [1 of 2] in pencil at the top of the page.
2
Bone fragments claimed by Charles Dawson to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex were passed to the author, who was Keeper of Geology at the British Museum (Natural History). From the reconstruction of the skull, Woodward proposed that Piltdown Man represented an evolutionary missing link, since the combination of a human-like cranium with an ape-like jaw tended to support the prevailing idea that human evolution began with the brain. It proved to be a hoax in which the lower jawbone of an orangutan was combined with the cranium of a modern human. It was only exposed as a forgery in 1953.
3
Damon, Robert Ferris (1845-1929) established a dealership in Natural History specimens in Weymouth, Dorset, with his father, Robert Damon (1814-1889) an English conchologist and geologist.
4
Also called the Mauer jaw, thought to be about 500,000 years old. It was discovered in the great sandpit at Mauer, Southeast of Heidelberg, Germany in 1907 by Daniel Hartmann, who attributed it to a distinct hominid species, named Homo heidelbergensis.
5
Woodward, Arthur Smith (1864-1944) English palaeontologist, known as a world expert in fossil fish. He also described the Piltdown Man fossils, which were later determined to be fraudulent (see Endnote 2).
6
Wallace, William Greenell (1871-1951) Electrical engineer, second son and third child of ARW.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP6232.7214)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Envelope (WCP6232.7215)

Envelope addressed to "W. G. Wallace, Esq., Ashley Chambers, Boscombe, Hants", with stamp, postmarked "SOUTH KENSINGTON S.0 | 5.45 PM | 4 DEC 16". Blue crayon note "Auto" is written on front and back of envelope in the hand of W. G. Wallace. [Envelope (WCP6232.7215)]

Please cite as “WCP6232,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6232