52 Henry Dewey — Palaeolithic Flake-implements 



in the usual direction, and many have the white or cream patination 

 so frequently found at St. Acheul. 



In another pit (Globe Pit) near Greenhithe a flake-implement 

 having a china-white patination was found in loam from which 

 forms assigned to the Le Monstier period have frequently been 

 collected. A racloir flake belonging to the St. Acheul period was 

 dug out of the clay of the Middle Gravel. 



Subsequently to the deposition of the 100 ft. gravels a tributary 

 of the Thames, the Ebbsfleet, cut out a valley some 50 feet deep. 

 This valley was afterwards partially filled up with an unstratified 

 mass of chalky rubble, sand, pebbles, and clay containing a number 

 of bones, teeth, and tusks of various extinct mammals. At the base 

 of this rubble, and lying on a fairly even floor, many thousands of 

 flakes, cores, and implements have been found. The cores resemble 

 the carapace of a tortoise, and the worked flints are characterized by 

 a peculiar faceting of the platform or striking-plane. The core was 

 carefully flaked and a complete implement struck off at a single 

 blow on one of the facets, but the underside carried an enormous 

 bulb of percussion. 



Precisely similar forms wei'e discovered by Professor Commont, 

 who succeeded in dating the finds as belonging to the early part of 

 the Le Moustier period. In the Ebbsfleet Valley the flake industry 

 had very nearly replaced the core implement, as has already been 

 described by Mr. Reginald A. Smith. 1 



The investigations at Mill End, near Rickmansworth, were less 

 decisive in their results. They were undertaken in the large gravel- 

 pit where some 16 feet of red gravel with seams of sand are exposed. 

 A peculiar feature of the gravel is the occurrence of large cave-like 

 spaces, which may have been formed by the thawing of frozen 

 masses of sand. These deposits rest upon a wide terrace flanking 

 the River Colne. Palseoliths of Chelles type have been found in 

 abundance in the past ; in fact, nearly every implement that has 

 come from this pit is of the early Chelles coup-de-poing form, with 

 heavy base and acute point. The Croxley Green pit, higher up the 

 river, on the other hand, has yielded numbers of the early St. Acheul, 

 ovate, type of implement. 2 As a result of the joint examinations by 

 the Geological Survey and the British Museum, but very few 

 implements were found, although such as were discovered supplied 

 confirmatory evidence of Sir Hugh Beevor's conclusions. 



One good flake-implement resembling a coup-de-poing, but 

 probably a racloir, was secured by the author : it is figured in PL II, 

 Fig. 7, and may be compared with one found by the late Lieut. C.H. 

 Cuunington at Knowle Pit, Savernake. The two implements are 

 very nearly identical as regards workmanship, shape, size, and use. 



These British deposits and their contained implements may now 

 be compared with those examined by Professor Commont in 

 France. He worked out in detail the paleolithic sequence in the 

 Pleistocene deposits of the terraces in the valley of the Somme. 

 There are there four terraces representing the succession of levels at 



1 Archmologia, Ixii, 532. 



2 Sir Hugh Beevor, Proc. Geol. Assoc, xxi, 245. 



