104 Rev. R. A. Bullen— Eoliths from 8. 8f 8. W. England. 



Well Hill, Kent,^ whose edges are almost or quite free from 

 contusion. 



We are now in a better position thus to define the eoliths through 

 Dr. H. P. Blackmore's work at Alderbury during many years. In 

 that deposit at 325 feet O.D., about 3 miles south-east of Salisbury, 

 no paleeoliths of accepted type have been discovered, a fact which 

 demonstrates to my mind the later age of some of the more or less 

 ochreous implements of Palaeolithic types from the Chalk Plateau 

 of Kent. Thus the Pre-Glacial plateau specimens are divisible into 

 two periods, although Prestwich in his two papers classed them all 

 as palgeoliths, and in Professor Rupert Jones' opinion this mixture 

 of early Palaeolithic and Eolithic types only shows that man varied 

 his work. 



Some Palaeolithic implements from the Kent plateau with a porcel- 

 laneous lustre have also occurred as surface finds near Bower Lane, 

 Eynesford. These belong to a later epoch, and seem to have been 

 dropped by PalEsolithic hunters on the surface and to have been 

 bleached by contact with the clay. The alumina of the clay 

 undoubtedly has this bleaching action, and even softens the flints by 

 extracting the water of crystallization, either as they rested or were 

 slightly embedded in it." This also seems to have been the case of 

 Prestwich's porcellaneous Downton implement quoted by Mr. C. 

 Reid, which occurred at a level to which in age it does not apparently 

 belong.^ However, the fact remains that from the gravel deposit at 

 Bat's Corner, Kent (the British Association pit excavated by Mr. B. 

 Harrison, 1894, the geological age of which is somewhat uncertain, 

 but probably pre-Glacial), and from the pit at Alderbury worked so 

 assiduously by Dr. H. P. Blackmore (the age of which, from the 

 occurrence of Pecten asper and other Gault and Upper Greensand 

 fossils, is that of the Southern Drift), the implements of Palaeolithic 

 type are wanting, and the Eoliths wrought and used by man only 

 occur. These are either ' straight sleekers,' ' round sleekers,' or 

 ' hollow scrapers,' certain of them with the point somewhat like 

 a bird's beak, which characteristic form Dr. Blackmore considers 

 especially belongs to implements of the Eolithic epoch. 



As this bird-beak point occurs in not a few definite palasoliths 

 (Dr. Blackmore has several in the Museum at Salisbury), and the 

 hollow curve in not a few others (the latter notably in those from 

 the newly discovered Knowle Pit, Savernake), we seem to be 

 arriving at some steps in the evolution of the paleeolith. 



1 This specimen, found close to the 500 feet contour, may have been made near 

 the spot where found. Professor Eupert Jones, however, from the point of view 

 of the denudation of the "Weald, suggests that implements belonging to the Southern 

 Drift, moving downward along the slopes of the Old Wealden Heights, and enclosed 

 in mud or clay, might travel a considerable distance without being subject to 

 contusion. 



2 Bullen, "Eolithic Implements" : Trans. Victoria Institute, 1901, vol. xxsiii, 

 p. 196. 



^ " Geol. of Country round Ringwood," p. 36. The specimen is preserved in 

 the Prestwich Collection in the Geological Gallery of the British Museum (Natural 

 History), in the tenth drawer, left-hand tier. 



