the close of the seventeenth century down to the present. A roughly-chipped pointed implement of flint[1] was dug up about the year 1690, in association with the remains of an elephant, in the gravel at Gray's Inn Lane,[2] and after being preserved for more than 150 years in the Sloane Collection and in the British Museum, was ultimately recognised by Mr. Franks as identical with those which were discovered in the river gravels of Amiens and Abbeville during the second quarter of the present century. Its shape is very well shown in the accompanying figure, borrowed from the work of Mr. John Evans, D.C.L.
Similar implements, together with triangular flint flakes of the type Fig. 27, and rounded scrapers for the preparation of skins, in form like that of the preceding figure, but with their ends rounded, are described by General Lane Fox[3] from the gravel of Acton Church, on the north side of the Thames, in association with the mammoth, and under conditions shown in the following section (Fig. 34).
The implements occur very generally here as elsewhere at the bottom of the gravels on the London Clay, and vary in size according to the size of the surrounding flints, from which it may be inferred that either they were made of materials on the spot where they are found, or, as is more probable, that they have been deposited by water by which they have been sorted in the same manner as the gravels in which they are imbedded. A
- ↑ These implements are termed Palæolithic, in contradistinction to the polished ones of the newer stone age or the Neolithic.
- ↑ For details relating to these discoveries, see Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, p. 521.
- ↑ Quart. Geol. Journ. Lond. xxviii. p. 449.
