brick-earth pit at Erith. It is figured and described in the Argonaut.[1] Another flake found in 1876 in the same stratum as that in which ten years earlier a skull of a musk ox occurred, has been figured by Professor Boyd Dawkins.[2]
The fauna of the Crayford beds is remarkable, and comprises two Arctic forms, Ovibos moschatus and a Spermophilus, as well as Megaceros hibernicus, Rhinoceros megarhinus, tichorhinus and leptorhinus, Elephas primigenius and antiquus, lion, hyæna, bear, and bison. Professor Boyd Dawkins regards it as Mid-Pleistocene.[3]
Before proceeding to discuss the discoveries that have been made in and near the valley of the Darent, it will be well to follow the course of the Thames a little farther eastward, and record those that have been made in the neighbourhood of North- fleet, opposite Gray's Thurrock. At several places within about a mile of North fleet Station, and to the west of it, especially at Swanscombe, Milton Street, and Galley Hill, gravel has been dug in considerable quantities, and has proved to contain a very large number of palæolithic implements of various forms, among which the pointed type is most abundant. At Milton Street[4] the surface level is about 100 feet above the Thames, and at Galley Hill[5] about 90 feet. It was in this pit, apparently at a depth of about 8 feet from the top of the gravel, that a human skull, or to judge from the presence of both tibiæ, a whole skeleton, was discovered in September, 1888. No formal account of the discovery was given until nearly seven years afterwards, when Mr. E. T. Newton, F.R.S., communicated a detailed notice of the skull and limb-bones to the Geological Society.[6] I was present at the meeting, but it appeared to me that the evidence as to the contemporaneity of the bones with the containing beds was hardly convincing, and I ventured to assume an attitude of doubt with regard to the discovery which I still maintain. There can, however, be no question as to the true palæolithic character of the implements found in the gravels, of which a few are figured in illustration of Mr. Newton's paper.[7]
Leaving the Thames we come to the valley of the Darent, in which, about a mile E.S.E.[8] of Horton Kirby, Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., in 1861, found upon the surface, on the top of a hill, a
- ↑ Sep., 1875, p. 263.
- ↑ "Early Man in Brit.," 1880, p. 136.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 135.
- ↑ Q. J. G. S., vol. xlvii., 1891, p. 129, pl. vi.
- ↑ Q. J. G. S., vol. li., 1895, p. 505.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 505.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 523.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xxxix. p. 74; Lubbock, "Preh. Times," 4th ed., p. 355.
