small ovate implement about 312 inches long, and in form much like Fig. 468.
At Lullingstone,[1] at an elevation of 400 feet, another implement has been found, and a pointed specimen of the Amiens type was picked up by Miss H. Waring on Cockerhurst Farm,[2] near Shoreham, at the level of about 430 feet.
I now come to the numerous and important discoveries made during the last thirty years by Mr. Benjamin Harrison,[3] of Ightham, which, aided by Sir Joseph Prestwich's interpretation of them, have done much to revolutionize our ideas as to the age and character of the Drift deposits capping the Chalk Downs in Western Kent, north of the escarpment facing the Weald.
All around Ightham, at different elevations above the bottom of the neighbouring valley of the Shode, Mr. Harrison has succeeded in discovering palæolithic implements of flint, for the most part of oval or ovate forms, but not unfrequently pointed. Fane Hill, Bewley, Chart Farm, Stone Pit Farm, Stone Street, Seal and Ash to the North may be mentioned among the localities where his search was successful. He has also found nearly fifty implements in the talus of Oldbury Hill.[4]
Some of those from Seal occurred at a height of 420 feet above Ordnance Datum, and on what appeared to be the watershed between the Medway and the Darent. An almost circular specimen formed of ochreous flint and found at Bewley, Ightham, is shown in Fig. 456a.
For full particulars of the localities and their relative levels, the reader must be referred to Sir Joseph Prestwich's comprehensive paper[5] on the occurrence of palæolithic flint implements in the neighbourhood of Ightham, Kent, in which about forty places are mentioned. Since that paper was published, Mr. Harrison, aided by Mr. de B. Crawshay, has extended his researches with the result that many more implements have been found at high elevations to the north of the escarpment of the chalk. These discoveries enabled Sir Joseph Prestwich in another paper[6] on the Age, Formation and successive Drift-stages of the valley of the Darent, and on the origin of its chalk escarpment, still farther to extend his interesting speculations. It is true that he accepts as being
- ↑ Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xxi., 1892, p. 246.
- ↑ Q. J. G. S., vol. xlvii., 1891, p. 130.
- ↑ journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xxi. p. 263.
- ↑ Brit. Assoc. Rep., 1891, pp. 363, 652.
- ↑ Q. J. G. S., vol. xlv., 1889, p. 270.
- ↑ Q. J. G. S., vol. xlvii., 1891, p. 126. See also Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xxi., 1892, p. 246; and Prestwich, "Controverted Questions in Geology," 1895.
