6 Darbishire, Implements from the Kentish Plateau. 



Mr. Evans' announcement stimulated a host of 

 searchers and discoverers, and reports of various findings 

 were received from various parts of the country. 



In mineralogical character these implements vary 

 from flint, the characteristic hard material of the chalk 

 district, to various forms of chert elsewhere. All are 

 characterised by definite special forms of manufacture 

 and shape, and generally are easily discriminated from 

 similar pieces of natural fracture. 



One of the most remarkable sources of implements of 

 the latter group, was the valley of the Axe in Dorsetshire. 

 From large quarries known as Broom Pits, near Axminster, 

 the skilled science of the curators of the celebrated Black- 

 more Museum at Salisbury soon stored a most wonderful 

 collection. Large gravel pits at Swanscombe, on the 

 Thames, and at Aylesford, on the Medway, also supplied 

 many beautiful specimens, but of more recent forms. 



For the purposes of my present paper I have placed 

 on the table examples of the French and of several 

 English series of these implements. 



When the British Association met in Manchester, in 

 1861, Mr. Evans, with whom I had had some previous 

 communication on similar subjects, was kind enough to 

 send me for exhibition here a series of the then recently 

 discovered and published " Implements from the Valley 

 of the Somme." 



The whole of these discoveries opened so new a page 

 in scientific history of the surface of the world and its 

 inhabitants, that they immediately raised questions of the 

 most embarrassing kind, not only as to the actual chrono- 

 logical interval between their deposit in the gravels and 

 their discovery to-day, but as to the inevitable implication 

 of the question of the existence in remote antiquity and 

 the duration in this part of the world of men able to make 

 and use these implements. 



