lo Darbishire, Implements from the Kentish Plateau. 



This characteristic dev^elopment has realised in Mr. 

 Harrison's own collection more than 3,000 of what are 

 known as plateau implements. Mr. Crawshay, the 

 Rev. R. A. Bullen, Mr. Bell, Mr. W. J. L. Abbott and 

 many others have made large collections of the kind, and 

 many valuable communications have been made to 

 various scientific societies from one or other observers, and 

 the whole subject has also been sympathetically reviewed 

 by men of such extended scientific familiarity and 

 philosophical accuracy as Mr. Grant Allen and Mr. 

 Andrew Lang, whom we may well call in this case unpro- 

 fessional witnesses. Each of these has written on the 

 remains in question with genial acceptance. 



There are still, of course, sceptics some of whom 

 question the claim of these plateau implements to be 

 even manufactured at all, — a most absurd doubt indeed ! 



Plateau specimens are almost uniformly of a dark 

 flint, very heavily patinated with a reddish orange surface, 

 in itself a proof of enormous antiquity of exposure to the 

 patinating influences, whatever they were. 



These specimens appear to have been pieces of natural 

 flint, more or less artifically chipped, as I shall show, into 

 particular shapes. 



Of course, anyone who has attempted this research at 

 all is familiar with the effects produced by natural causes, 

 such as characteristic mineralogical formation, the intrusion 

 of water and the expansion of frost, or the accidental 

 collision of stones in the watercourse, or, in not a iew 

 cases, the accidental formation of frost splints of rock 

 and their separation from the matrix ; and at the same 

 time, with the large occurrence of chips or imperfect tools 

 thrown away by the workers. 



The common charge against the plateau implements 

 is that they are the work of these natural causes and not 



