The river gravels of the Boyne Hill (1st., 100 ft. and, in this district, the highest) Terrace of the Thames at Swanscombe (Kent) have yielded flint implements in thousands for many years.As long ago as 1905 these contemporary (not the derived) implements were correlated with the St. Acheul culture in the Somme Valley, and in 1912 some excavations were undertaken by the Geological Survey and the British Museum to determine the exact horizon at which these implements occur.These excavations showed conclusively that the level where the implements were so abundant was at the top of the middle gravel. The excavators regarded these middle gravel implements as of “Chelles” type, but recent work has caused the word “Chelles” to be used in a more restricted sense, and they may now be regarded as of St. Acheul type.The point of the exact determination of the middle gravel implements is important, on account of its bearing upon the age of the industry which occurs in the gravel below the middle gravel.

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The well-known brick-earth deposits of Crayford, in Kent (forming part of the so-called 50-ft., or middle terrace of the Thames), have for many years yielded flint implements of Mousterian type, and more recently (1910-12) I have succeeded in finding the cores from which such implements were struck.In the closing decades of the last century long, slender knives of fine quality flint were abundant, but since the writer first came to have the pits under observation (in 1903) implements of all kinds have been rare, and many winters go by with only the discovery of a few simple flakes.References up till 1889 are given in the “Geology of London,” and, in 1905, Messrs. Hinton and Kennard brought them up to date in their paper on “The Relative Ages of the Stone Implements of the Lower Thames Valley,” This valuable paper was the first to attribute the characteristic Crayford implement to the Mousterian period, on account of the similarity in workmanship to those from Le Moustier.

* E. T. Newton. "Note on Specimens of Rhaxella-chert J etc." Prot. Geol, Assoc., vol, XS, p. 127. t Some pebbles of Rhaxella-chert were noted amongst specimens from the gravels ot the River Lea, exhibited by the Rev. Dr. A. Irving during the excursion to Bishop's Stortford in IgII (A. L. L.).

Since my paper on the Clactonian Industry at Swanscombe was read in 1929, I have obtained many more implements from Barnfield Pit (the one there described) and also a large collection from Rickson's Farm Pit.The lower gravel at Rickson's Farm Pit has yielded the same culture as the lower gravel in Barnneld Pit, and it underlies a shell-bed containing I heodoxus cantianus (Ken. and B. B. Wood.), which is succeeded by a gravel containing well finished St. Acheul hand-axes in both places. The Acheulian tools from Rickson's Farm Pit differ somewhat from those obtained in Barnfield Pit in that there are fewer of the pear-shaped, pointed implements. The usual type in the former pit is thinner, more ovate, and frequently with a pronounced ‘twist’ of the reversed S kind.