tters from Cairo abound in tales of swapping and exchange with other natural historians of several North African nations. He was plugged into an amateur network of information and barter and might have received the teeth from a colleague.
This argument formed the base of evidence among my senior colleagues who suspected Teilhard-A. S. Romer, Bryan Patterson, and Louis Leakey (Leakey also mentioned Teilhard's knowledge of chemistry and the clever staining of the Piltdown bones). According to hearsay, le Gros Clark himself, a member of the trio that exposed the hoax, also suspected Teilhard on this basis. I regard this argument as suggestive, but not compelling. Dawson too was plugged into a network of amateur exchange.
3. Teilhard's good luck at Piltdown. Although records are frustratingly vague, I believe that all the Piltdown pieces were found by the original trio-Dawson, Smith Woodward, and Teilhard. (In the official version, a workman may have given Dawson the first piece in 1908.) Dawson, of course, unearthed most of the material himself. Smith Woodward, so far as I can tell, found only one cranial fragment. Teilhard, who spent less time at Piltdown than his two colleagues, was blessed. He found a fragment of the elephant tooth, a worked flint, and the famous canine.
People who have never collected in the field probably do not realize how difficult and chancy the operation is when fossils are sparse. There is no magic to it, just hard work. A tooth in a gravel pit is about as conspicuous as the proverbial needle in a haystack. The hoaxer worked hard on his Piltdown material. He filed the canine and painted it to simulate age. Apes' teeth are not easy to come by. If I had but one precious item, I would not stick it into a large gravel heap and then hope that some innocent companion would find it. It would probably be lost forever, not triumphantly  recovered. I doubt that I would ever find it again myself, after someone else had mucked about extensively in the pile.
Teilhard described his discovery in the first letter to Oakley: "When I found the canine, it was so inconspicuous amidst the gravels which had been spread on the ground for sifting that it seems to me quite unlikely that the tooth could have been planted. I can even remember Sir Arthur congratulating me on the sharpness of my eyesight." -Smith Woodward's recollection (from his last book of 1948) is more graphic:
We were excavating a rather deep and hot trench in which Father Teilhard, in black clothing, was especially energetic; and, as we thought he seemed a little exhausted, we suggested that he should leave us to do the hard labor for a time while he had comparative rest in searching the rain-washed spread gravel. Very soon he exclaimed that he had picked up the missing canine tooth, but we were incredulous, and told him we had already seen several bits of ironstone, which looked like teeth, on the spot where he stood. He insisted, however, that he was not deceived, so we both left our digging to go and verify his discovery. There could be no doubt about it, and we all spent the rest of that day until dusk crawling over the gravel in the vain quest for more.
I also have some doubt about Teilhard's flint, for it is the only Piltdown item indubitably found in situ. All the other specimens either came from gravel heaps that had been dug up and spread upon the ground or cannot be surely traced. Now in situ can signify one of two things (and the records do not permit a distinction). It may mean that the gravel bed lay exposed in a ditch, cliff, or road cut-in which case, anyone might have stuck the flint in. But it may mean that Teilhard dug into the layer from undisturbed, overlying ground-in which case, he could only have planted the flint himself.
 Again, I regard this argument only as suggestive, not as definitive. It is the weakest point of all, hence its place at the bottom of my list. Perhaps Teilhard was simply a particularly keen observer.
[An illustration in Natural History original - deleted in reprint]