Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/633

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
VALLEY OF THE MEDWAY.
611

It has, however, had the end broken off. Mr. B. Harrison has given me another thinner and more perfect pointed specimen made from a flat block of flint. Numerous remains of the pleistocene fauna have been found in the gravels.

In 1862, Prof. T. McK. Hughes, F.R.S., found a rude palæolithic implement near Otterham Quay, Chatham, and another at Gillingham, in the same neighbourhood. He also picked up a small oval implement at Tweedale, half-way between Chatham and Upchurch; and one of larger size, 5 inches long, with a rounded point and truncated base, on the railway, west of Newington Station. Prof. Hughes likewise found a rudely-chipped implement in gravel said to have been brought from a pit near the railway-cutting at Hartlip. There may be some question whether the gravels at these latter places would be more properly classed a» belonging to the valley of the Thames, or to that of the Medway. On the north of the Medway, at St. Mary, in the hundred of Hoo, Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., found a small, neatly-chipped, pointed implement; and another at Stoke, in the same district, with rounded point, and sub-triangular in form. They are both ochreous in colour, and have their angles much abraded. To the south of Gravesend, at some distance from either the Medway or the Thames, near Meopham, Nursted, and Cobham, he has also found broken implements of palæolithic types.

In the Christy Collection is an ovate implement, 41/4 inches long, in form like Fig. 462, which was discovered by Mr. E. A. Bernays on a heap of gravel at Chatham.

I have also an ovate implement found in gravel at the Engineering School, Chatham, in 1882, by Prof. J. W. Judd, F.R.S.,. who presented it to me; as well as a good pointed implement found at Chatham by Mr. Worthington Smith.

Farther east. Prof. Hughes found a large implement, which, though wanting its point, is 8 inches long, in gravel said to have been brought from a pit on the hill north of the railway, and half a mile east of Teynham Station; and at Ospringe, near Faversham, Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins found, in 1865, not in gravel, but on the surface, a small, neatly-chipped, ovate implement. In form it resembles Fig. 467, from the Isle of Wight, but is white and porcellanous. I have another fine specimen, from the brick-earth at Faversham, which was given to me by Mr. J. W. Morris of that town. It is 5 inches long, in form much like Fig. 456, but thinner, and it has weathered to a porcellanous white on