| Description | He returns Leakey's manuscript which he has read. It needs an editor's blue pencil to remove 'Leakeyisms', but Hill is not concerned with that. The preface has not been supplied and that must be seen. It should be made clear that the Royal Society is in no way responsible for the matter of the book, if it becomes necessary to acknowledge any financial help from the Society. On the whole, the manuscript is a fair statement of fact. In Chapter 1 there is a lack of candour about Oldoway Man and Leakey's assertions of the great age of the fossil which brought out Professor Reck's claims and necessitated the intervention of geologists such as Wayland and himself. The argument is not worth pursuing but why tell half the story? It should suffice if full reference footnotes to the letters in Nature are inserted. Reid Moir will disagree with what Leakey says about East Anglia in Chapter 4, but there are no libellous statements so they can watch the battle, if one develops. It might be well if some archaeologist looks at the manuscript and he recommends Henry Balfour at Oxford or Miles Burkitt at Cambridge. |