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REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES 
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great is the interest attaching to its bone-bearing fissures, to its eolithic flint- 
implements and to the physical geography of their occurrence, that it has neces- 
sarily become the centre of much learned controversy, and Mr. Bennett’s “story” 
has become very argumentative and, perhaps, too mainly geological for that 
flippant person the “general reader.” Even the “Walks round Ightham ” are 
those of a geologist : a chapter on the botany of the district was unfortunately 
not forthcoming; and it has not been the business of any of the contributors to 
speak of the scenic beauties of the spot. Excellent as are Mr. J. Scott Temple’s 
historical chapters, especially that on “ Old Roads,” they strike us as too colour- 
less, and we hear too much of manorial records. It is, of course, thoroughly 
scientific ; but surely such a story as that of Cade’s rebellion might have been told 
Kits Coxy House. 
(From “ Ightham,” from a photograph by Mr. H. Elgar, by kind permission of 
the Homeland Association.) 
in more exhilarating fashion. Similarly, we feel that Mr. Filkins’ account of that 
gem of English domestic architecture, Ightham Mote, though admirably adapted 
for the pages of our technical contemporary. The Builder, hardly gives an ordinary 
tourist a notion of the charms in store for him. The editor would seem to have 
adopted Leslie Stephen’s critical canon, “No flowers, by request” ; but perhaps 
we shall be told that it is all the exigencies of space, and that to dilate on 
Ightham’s many graces would have required a far bulkier volume. What we 
fear is that, while the unscientific tourist may be repelled, the archaeologist and 
geologist may not guess from its title and from the series in which it appears 
that this is a work which demands their serious attention. Apart altogether 
from the description of Mr. Lewis Abbott’s finds in the fissures and the vindica- 
tion of the human workmanship of the eoliths, which we naturally expected to 
find here, the glacial Weald theory of Mr. Abbott, and Mr. Bennett’s arguments 
for the co-operation of surface and subterranean erosion in the making of such 
gorges as those of Loose and Plaxtole, give the book an importance which is not 
