1 66 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
fig. 56, lies some five miles to the west of Swanscombe, 
situated in the valley of the Darent where that stream 
breaks through the line of the 100-foot terrace and 
enters the marshy land on the south bank of the Thames. 
On the western side of the valley of the Darent, on the 
outskirts of the town of Dartford, a pit had been opened 
in a deposit of gravel, some 18 feet in depth. The 
stratified gravels, containing interpolated patches of loam, 
represented a deposit of the ancient Darent. The sub- 
stratum of chalk on which the gravel rests is about 45 
feet above the Ordnance Datum line, and 30 feet above 
the Darent, which is about a third of a mile distant, to 
the east. In 1902, the pit, having proved unprofitable 
from a commercial point of view, was taken over by an 
ardent student of ancient man — Mr W. M. Newton, 
who then resided in Dartford. Between 1902 and 1908 
" every bit of gravel excavated — some 5000 tons — 
passed under the deliberate scrutiny of my workman, 
and every evening his daily finds had my careful 
examination." ^ The majority of the implements dis- 
covered were of the later Acheulean type. They 
occurred especially plentifully near a black band in the 
gravel, which Mr Newton regarded as an indication of 
an old land surface. He also found numerous examples 
of " figure-stones " — curiously shaped natural flints, 
which, in some cases, had been deliberately chipped to 
give a semblance to the form of certain animals. Such 
figure-stones received the serious consideration of M. 
Boucher de Perthes (see p. 196). 
The account of the discovery of a human skull, in the 
o-ravel of the Dartford pit, I shall give in Mr Newton's 
own words : ^ — 
" I was, as you know, much interested in the 
gravel as producing implements and other curious 
forms of man-worked flints in the shape of animals 
and heads of animals. I was in the pit almost every 
1 See Mr Newton's paper on " Palaeolithic Figures of Flint,'" Journ. 
British Archccolog. Assoc, March 191 3, p. 3- 
2 A letter to the Author, dated February 27th, 191 1. 
