Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/659

Rh consists principally of subangular and rolled flints, a few Tertiary flint-pebbles, a considerable proportion of small quartz pebbles, and a few fragments of old rocks and Upper Greensand chert; the whole in a sandy matrix, and having in places some sandy seams. I am not aware of any mammalian or molluscan remains having been found in them. They are nearly, if not quite, on the summit of table-land, slightly inclining seawards, and with the valley of the Bourne to the north, with higher ground beyond it and also to the west. The surface near the turnpike is about 130 feet above the mean sea-level.

Fig. 476.—Bournemouth

Following the presumed course of the ancient river Solent for about ten miles eastward, along what is now the coast, we come to Barton. For the whole distance the land to the north is thickly capped with gravel; and at Barton, on the slope of the cliff, a flat, oval implement, 6 inches long, and in form much like that from Hill Head, Fig. 466, was found by an officer of the Coast Guard, about 1868, and was subsequently presented to the Christy Collection by Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A.

Since that time an astonishing number of palæolithic implements has been found in the district extending from Chuton Bunny by Barton and Hordwell to Milford. I have about sixty specimens from this district in my own collection, many of them very perfect of their kind. For the most part they have been picked up on the shore and on the talus of the gravel-capped cliff, but they have occasionally been found in the gravel itself. A few have been made of Upper Greensand chert, but the majority are of flint. Nearly all the usual types are represented, several by large examples. I have pointed, oval, and ovate specimens, as much as 8 and 8 inches in length. Those from the gravel are as a rule sharp and but little abraded, while the condition of those found on the shore depends upon the length of time that they have been exposed to the rolling action of the sea since their fall from the cliff.