GEOLOGY block of flint was restored.^ In the implement-bearing gravels of Galley Hill, Northfleet, human bones were found which may possibly be of Paleolithic age.^ Old fluviatile deposits are particularly numerous in the Medway valley, and must represent a long period of erosion, as ancient river gravels occur as high as 300 feet above the present stream at East Mailing/ In the brick-earths belonging to this valley, which fill wide ' pipes ' and open joints in the Kentish Rag around Maidstone, many mammalian bones have been obtained, including those of mammoth, rhinoceros, hyena, reindeer, bos, horse, etc., with a few land shells. Similar fossils have occasionally been found in other parts of the valley.* Of still greater interest is the large series of remains which has been collected from a fissure in the Kentish Rag near Ightham, in the valley of the Shode or Plaxtole tributary of the Medway.® These represent most of the large animals last mentioned, along with the roedeer, Arctic fox and common fox, and besides these, the bones of numerous small mammals, birds and reptiles, which were obtained by carefully sifting the material from the fissure. Among these smaller animals were several bats, shrews and voles, with the Norwegian and Arctic lemmings and the pika or tailless hare. Some of these animals are characteristic of the present ' steppe fauna ' of northern Siberia, and they afford strong support to the view* that a cold dry climate prevailed in this part of England during some portion of Pleistocene times. The frog, toad, newt, slow-worm, common snake and viper were also recognized ; and the birds' bones represented the skylark, with probably the song-thrush, wheatear, wagtail, buzzard, common duck and gull. Numerous land and freshwater shells, with a few insect and plant remains, were also found in this prolific fissure. Another richly fossiliferous deposit deserving mention is the small patch of gravel and loam worked out many years on the western edge of the little valley at Folkestone, under the old Battery, which yielded remains of the mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, Irish elk, rein- deer, bison, bos, horse, etc. The valleys of the Stour and the Darent, though less fossiliferous, bear similar testimony to long-continued fluviatile erosion, but we have no space for further details under this head.^ 1 See F. C. J. Spurrell. ' On the discovery of the place where Paleolithic Implements were made at Crayford,' Quart. Jouitt. Geol. Soc. (1880), xxxvi. 544-8. 2 E. T. Newton, ' On a Human Sliull and Limb Bones found in the Palsolithic Terrace-Gravel at Galley HiU, Kent,' Quart. Jourti. Geol. Soc. (1895), li. 505. ^ Mem. Geol. Survey, 'Geology of the Weald,' pp. 172-88.
- e.g. a femur of rhinoceros was recently obtained in drainage-works at Tonbridge, at the southern
edge of the Medway flat. See also subsequent article ' Palaeontology',' p. 31. 5 W. J. Lewis Abbott, ' The Ossiferous Fissures near Ightham ' ; and E. T. Newton, F.R.S., ' The Vertebrate Fauna from the Fissure . . . ,' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1894), 1. 171-210. See also ' Palaeontology,' p. 3 I . ® C. Reid, 'Desert or Steppe Conditions in Britain,' Natural Science (1893), iii. 367-70. 7 S. J. Mackie, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1851), vii. 257. See also 'Geology of the Weald,' p. 163, for other references. 8 Among other localities for Paleolithic implements in Kent, probably derived from the River Drift, 23
