328. -VT 



EVIDENCES OF PREHISTORIC MAN IN 



WEST KENT. 



By 1.. RUSSELL LARKBY. 

 [/vcdd fiiiiuiirv lOth, 1904.] 



WHEN your Secretary kindly asked me to read a paper 

 before the Club, I felt the difficulty of two possible 

 disabilities — that, both my implements and area being non-local, 

 they might lose something of their interest ; also, the subject 

 of Eolithic implements having been ably dealt with by one of your 

 members, their interest might suffer deterioration. As, 

 however, I am confident you will agree with me that the 

 evidence of man is always worthy of attention, I propose to place 

 before you some remarks as to the bearing of the evidence 

 produced by a careful search in a small area west of the River 

 iDarent. 



It is unnecessary lor me to weary you w'ith any extended 

 notice of that ereat earth movement known -as the elevation 

 of the Weald, or to do n>ore than remind you that 

 ihe upheaved area has been planed down, mainly by extinct and 

 existing rivers, to an undulating country presenting a series of 

 beautiful and richly wooded ridges. These ridges are bounded 

 in the north by the North Downs, masses of white chalk rising 

 above the less resistant beds of the Weald. At the top of the 

 chalk of the North Downs, there still exist fragments of the 

 once continuous Tertiary deposits, and overlying them is the 

 well-known plateau drift, the material from which has been 

 wrested another monument to the greater antiquity of man. 

 These patches of gravel therefore represent the deposits of 

 ancient rivers — rivers whose catchment basins existed on the 

 now denuded heights of the Weald. The plateau gravels 

 contain fragments of chert, Oldbury stone and Pliocene ironstone, 

 all of which owe their elevated position, far above the outcrop of 

 those rocks, to the action of rivers running almost due south to 

 north. A remarkably constant feature in Eolithic gravels is the 

 deep ochreous staining caused by long contact with those 

 ferruginous beds which enter so largely into the structure of the 

 \Veald, It is therefore possible to single out many of the flints 

 found in valley gravels as derivatives once forming a part of the 

 hi<^h level gravels of a now extinct river system. At the same 

 time it is not advisable to insist too strongly on ochreous staining 



