258 NATURAL SCIENCE. April. 



taken place, such as we should require any great amount of geological 

 knowledge to understand. But recent discoveries show that the 

 science does not begin with the archaeologist, but with the geologist 

 and the palaeontologist : when we come to deposits upon existing 

 watersheds, or others which bear no relation to them, or yet others 

 400 or 500 feet above these, it is obvious that the subject has entered 

 the domain of Geology. For the principal of these latter discoveries, 

 especially in Kent, we are indebted to the undaunted energy of 

 Benjamin Harrison, a tradesman in the little village of Ightham, 

 between Maidstone and Sevenoaks. 



It is now over thirty years since this indefatigable observer began 

 making a collection. From time to time the echoes of the great 

 thought-movements of the day reached this sequestered little village, 

 but they were to Harrison as handbills dropped from a balloon ; he 

 was entirely shut out from the scientific world. His struggles and 

 his perseverance ; his fighting against want of encouragement and 

 sleepless nights ; his early risings and tramps to some spot four or 

 five miles away, so as to be there at sunrise, and to hunt before 

 opening his shop : all these are matters to be read with a relish only 

 when the hero is no more. But, however Harrison's labours might 

 have suffered from want of sympathy, they were soon rewarded by 

 interesting finds. The house of his ancestors happened to stand in the 

 old Valley of the Shode ; relics of Palaeolithic man found not far from 

 his own shop soon whetted his appetite, and stimulated his researches. 

 He carefully searched almost every inch of the adjoining country 

 in the Holmesdale Valley, adding, as he went along, not only to his 

 finds, but bit by bit to his store of knowledge, until he had managed 

 to pull himself abreast of many of the scientific opinions of the day. 

 Then he chanced to come upon a very beautiful palaeolith (Fig. i), 

 some 70 ft. above the bed of the Shode, which set his mind at work in 

 another direction, and one in which it must be conceded he received 

 but little encouragement for a long time. From the first Harrison 

 had kept a strict account of his finds, numbered them, sketched them 

 into books, marked the position of their occurrence on the 6-inch map 

 of the district, and made notes upon them as they presented them- 

 selves to his mind. As he contemplated the skilful work of this 

 weapon, the question suggested itself — " Is it possible that this repre- 

 sents man's first essays at flint working ? If so, what a dexterous 

 creature he must have been born ; in fact, he must have dropped from 

 the clouds nearly perfect. But is it likely ? Is it at all probable that 

 man's evolution began with so highly-worked a flint weapon ? " To 

 which his reason answered : " No ! If, then, this is not one of the first, 

 where must I look for his earlier attempts, but to the more unwasted 

 conditions, to the gravel patches lying above the present watersheds? " 

 Nor were his labours in these places in vain, for he soon found a 

 number of implements, which, in point of workmanship, were inferior 

 to the maiority of those of the valley, and, therefore, — from an evolu- 



