158 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP.VI. 



the close of the seventeenth century down to the present. 

 A roughly-chipped pointed implement of flint 1 was dug 

 up about the year 1690, in association with the remains 

 of an elephant, in the gravel at Gray's Inn Lane, 2 and 

 after being preserved for more than 150 years in the 

 Sloane Collection and in the British Museum, was 

 ultimately recognised by Mr. Franks as identical with 

 those which were discovered in the river gravels of 

 Amiens and Abbeville during the second quarter of the 

 present century. Its shape is very well shown in the 

 accompanying figure, borrowed from the work of Mr. 

 John Evans, D.C.L. 



Similar implements, together with triangular flint 

 flakes of the type Fig. 27, and rounded scrapers for the 

 preparation of skins, in form like that of the preceding 

 figure, but with their ends rounded, are described by 

 General Lane Fox 3 from the gravel of Acton Church, 

 on the north side of the Thames, in association with 

 the mammoth, and under conditions shown in the follow- 

 ing section (Fig. 34). 



The implements occur very generally here as else- 

 where at the bottom of the gravels on the London Clay, 

 and vary in size according to the size of the surrounding 

 flints, from which it may be inferred that either they 

 were made of materials on the spot where they are found, 

 or, as is more probable, that they have been deposited by 

 water by which they have been sorted in the same 

 manner as the gravels in which they are imbedded. A 



1 These implements are termed Palaeolithic, in contradistinction to the 

 polished ones of the newer stone age or the Neolithic. 



2 For details relating to these discoveries, see Evans, Ancient Stone Im- 

 plements, p. 521. 



3 Quart. GeoL Journ. Lond. xxviii. p. 449. 



