III. 



On the Geology of the Plateau Implements 



of Kent/ 



THIS subject has been fully treated by Professor Prestwich in his 

 several memoirs in the Quart. Joiivn. Geol. Soc, vol. xlv., 1889 

 (the old worked flints at pages 282-286) ; vol. xlvi., 1890 (the general 

 geology of certain drift-deposits, and the geological stages of their 

 formation, pages 166-168 and 179) ; vol. xlvii., 1891 (the same 

 subjects, pages 126-159, particularly pages 157-159, and plate 6, and 

 the peculiar flints at page 160, with plate 8). Also in the Joiirn. 

 Anthrop. Instit., vol. xxi., 1892, pages 246-270, with plates 18-21. 



Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott has more lately contributed to Natural 

 Science (vol iv., no. 20, April, 1894) ^^ interesting paper "On the 

 Plateau Man in Kent," containing a clear account of the old 

 rude implements found on the Chalk Plateau, illustrated with two 

 plates. 



It is shown in these memoirs that certain superficial soils on the 

 North Downs, between Sevenoaks and Rochester, contain numerous 

 rudely-worked flints, which are connected with a gravel area, of very 

 great antiquity, and probably derived originally from the side of the 

 old Wealden Range, which once rose 2,000 to 3,000 feet above, where 

 Crowborough and other hills in Sussex now are. Those heights were 

 long since removed by natural agencies, such as rain, rivers, sea, frost, 

 and ice, probably with more than one time of energetic action, and 

 portions of their debris were distributed by old streams or otherwise to 

 and over a plateau of Chalk at a lower level on the flanks of the 

 range. 



These rude old implements have an ochreous tint, and are 

 associated with limited patches of much-worn gravel having the same 

 colour, and not forming well-defined beds, by no means thick enough 

 for the making of a gravel-pit. Nor are the implements under such 

 conditions as would lead to the supposition of their having received 



1 This paper was read before a combined meeting of the Anthropological and 

 Geological Sections of the British Association, on August 10, 1894, 'ri consequence 

 of a suggestion made by the Anthropological Institute that it was desirable to know 

 more of " The evidence afforded by the ' Plateau Gravels ' relative to the Antiquity 

 of Man." 



