37 
gravel from 20 to 30 feet in height^ over a distance of from 
200 to 300 yards. The gravel is mainly composed of frac- 
tured angular pieces of salmon-coloured cliert (the flint of the 
greensand) confusedly mixed with sand, and covered with 
the same loam and soil which coats the slopes of the hill-sides 
above. The implements are mainly obtained from near 
the base of the bed ; as is also the case in the gravel-beds of 
the valley of the Somme. 
On the west side of the valley on Coaxton-common I found 
long rough pieces of fractured chert, in colour and form 
similar to the so-called implements found on the surface of the 
greensand at Grand Pressigny, in Central France ; showing 
that the same form of implement is found in the same 
geological bed, and indicating a natural rather than an arti- 
ficial origin. 
On the surface of the arable land, about a mile east of 
Axminster, I found many perfect chert cores (from which 
flakes are supposed to have been struck by man), but few 
perfect flakes; this peculiarity, however, arises not from 
human design, but from the nature of the fracture of the 
stone itself, as chert differs from pure flint in breaking with 
a square splintery fracture, instead of a conchoidal fracture,^^* 
again indicating a natural rather than an artificial origin for 
these " cores. Thus, in both cases, there is no evidence of 
the skill of man overcoming the intractable nature of the 
material. 
I have called these broken pieces of chert from the ballast- 
pits implements, for the convenience of indicating that they 
are similar in form to those which, from other sites, have been 
dogmatically asserted to be implements made by palaeolithic 
man, and on which the whole of the direct evidence in support 
of that mythic creature at present rests ; but a consideration 
of the geological evidence in this case strongly leads to a con- 
trary opinion, as the origin and geological history of the 
chert gravel is so stamped on the surface of the country, that 
it can be read with an amount of certainty not attainable in 
former cases of this kind. 
As the pure flint is found in the upper chalk, so the less 
pure chert is mainly found in the upper greensand ; and the 
greensand beds cover an area of at least 500 square miles 
in the West of England. The flat-topped hills of this forma- 
tion rise to a height of 900 feet above the sea at its northern 
extension, and southward on the coast line to about 600 feet. 
Bristow’s Glossary of Chert. 
