Rev. R. A. BuUen— Eoliths from. 8. 8f 8.W. England, 105 



ITT. BesearcJies of Messrs. BlacTcmore, E. Westlahe, and 

 Clement Beid. 



Mr. B. Westlake, F.G.S., is now in the rank of workers on the 

 Eolithic question, and both he and Dr. Blackmore have kindly placed 

 their records from the Plateau terraces (or ' plains ') of the King- 

 wood area at my service in writing this paper. With two such 

 trained and enthusiastic workers on the spot our knowledge ought 

 to advance rapidly. 



From 1898, when Dr. Blackmore found an eolith in gravel on the 

 ridge at Woodfalls, near Eedlynch, to the present year,^ a sufficient 

 number of eoliths have been found by both the two above-named 

 workers to constitute the Plateau gravels of the Kingwood district 

 effective witnesses for the existence of man at a less advanced stage 

 of progress as to the manufacture of stone implements — lower, 

 i.e., than in the next or Paleolithic stages of human culture. For 

 these Plateau gravels are the highest in the New Forest district. 



Mr. Westlake states :^ " On November 4th, 1902, I found several 

 examples of eoliths in the east pit on Black Bush Plain, at a height 

 of about 410 feet O.D., or 310 feet above the Avon at Breamore. 

 This gravel caps the highest ground between Fordingbridge and 

 Southampton ; and, beyond having a slight slope towards the Solent, 

 has no obvious relation with any of the surrounding valleys. The 

 flatness of the plain and the much rolled and battered character of 

 the gravel, I think, point more to the marine origin suggested by 

 Mr. Codrington (1870) than to the river origin suggested by 



Mr. Eeid (1902) There can be no question as to the 



position and antiquity of the gravel." 



Mr. Clement Reid has seemingly good reasou for his reference to 

 river action, at least in contributing materials for the gravels, in the 

 fact that Jurassic rocks (silicified Purbeck Limestone) occur in the 

 Plateau gravels at 386 feet O.D. near Picket Corner.^ 



As the present paper, however, is rather simple in its scope, the 

 intention being to put on record the occurrence of Eoliths among the 

 Plateau gravels, we leave the existence or not of a Solent river to 

 the evidences for which, j9ro and con., Mr. Reid refers* in a useful 

 footnote. He is to be congratulated on breaking free from the usual 

 prejudice and tradition about man's geological age, and on accepting 

 and incorporating, in a memoir issued by the Geological Survey, 

 the long-despised and suspected Eolith. 



But in one small particular the " Diagram of the Terraces of the 

 Avon " (fig. 4, p. 34, op. cit.) needs reorganizing, for the researches 

 and ' finds ' of Dr. H. P. Blackmore (1898-1902), of Mr. E. Westlake 



1 The writer had previously found hollow curved scrapers at the summit of Alum 

 Chine and on Hinton Admiral Common in May, 1895, and a derived specimen at 

 Jumper's Heath in November, 1893. These were shown to and approved by the late 

 Sir Joseph Prestwich in 1893 and 1895 respectively. 



2 "Antiquity of Man in Hampshire," last page. King's Fordingbridge Almanac, 

 1903. An eolith from White Shoot Farm is figured in the text. 



^ C. Reid: " Geol. of Country round Ringwood," p. 30. 

 * Op. cit., p. 32, note. 



