328
EVIDENCES OF PREHISTORIC MAN IN
WEST KENT.
By J. RUSSELL LARKBY. 
[Read January 30th, 1904.]
WHEN your Secretary kindly asked me to read a paper
before the Club, I felt the difficulty of two possible
disabilities—that, both my implements and area being non-local,
they might lose something of their interest ; also, the subject
of Eolithic implements having been ably dealt with by one of your
members, their interest might suffer deterioration. As,
however, I am confident you will agree with me that the
evidence of man is always worthy of attention, I propose to place
before you some remarks as to ths bearing of the evidence
produced by a careful search in a small area west of the River
Darent. 
It is unnecessary for me to weary you with any extended
notice of that great earth movement known as the elevation
of the Weald, or to do more than remind you that
the upheaved area has been planed down, mainly by extinct and
existing rivers, to an undulating country presenting a series of
beautiful and richly wooded ridges. These ridges are bounded
in the north by the North Downs, masses of white chalk rising
above the less resistant beds of the Weald. At the top of the
chalk of the North Downs, there still exist fragments of the
once continuous Tertiary deposits, and overlying them is the
well-known plateau drift, the material from which has been
wrested another monument to the greater antiquity of man.
These patches of gravel therefore represent the deposits of
ancient rivers—rivers whose catchment basins existed on the
now denuded heights of the Weald. The plateau gravels
contain fragments of chert, Oldbury stone and Pliocene ironstone,
all of which owe their elevated position, far above the outcrop of
those rocks, to the action of rivers running almost due south to
north. A remarkably constant feature in Eolithic gravels is the
deep ochreous staining caused by long contact with those
ferruginous beds which enter so largely into the structure of the
Weald. It is therefore possible to single out many of the flints
found in valley gravels as derivatives once forming a part of the
high level gravels of a now extinct river system. At the same
time it is not advisable to insist too strongly on ochreous staining