implements) for more than two years before the discovery of the human remains, so that I was well acquainted with the pit beforehand.
In 1888 the chalk-pit itself was considerably smaller than now, and was constantly worked for chalk, used in the cement works, the gravels on the top being removed and "screened" on the spot. Thus the removal of the gravel had to keep pace with the excavations of the chalk beneath, so that several tons were removed daily and carted away.
It was on one of my fortnightly visits that I was informed by a man, named Jack Allsop (who had for a long time looked out and saved for me any implements or stones of similar shape, obtained while screening the ballast), that he had found a skull under the gravel. This I could hardly credit at first ; but on my asking him to show it to me, he produced it in several pieces from the base of a pillar of laminated clay and sand, where he had hidden it. I asked where the rest of the bones were; he pointed to the section opposite this pillar, and a few feet from it, and told me that he had left the other bones undisturbed for me to see ; and there, sure enough, about 2 feet from the top of the chalk, and 8 feet from the top of the gravel, portions of bone were projecting from a matrix of clayey loam and sand. He also told me that several of the men employed at the works, the master of the neighbouring schools, and others, had seen the skull.
The section of gravel was 10 or 11 feet thick, and extended for a considerable distance along the south and east end of the pit several pot-holes or pipes running from it deep into the chalk.
I carefully examined the section on either side of the remains, for some distance, drawing the attention of my son Richard, who was with me, and of Jack Allsop, to it. It presented an unbroken face of gravel stratified horizontally in bands of sand, small shingle, gravel, and, lower down, beds of clay and clayey loam, with occasional stones in it and it was in and below this that the remains were found. We carefully looked for any signs of the section being disturbed, but failed— the stratification being unbroken, and much the same as the section in the angle of the pit remaining to this day, but it was then clear, and not covered by rubbish as it now is in places, all the "callow " and loam at the top being at that time removed to allow of the gravel being got at.
2. Extract from a letter to Mr Newton by Matthew H. Heys, Greenhithe, who was master of the neighbouring school above referred to, dated February 1895 :—
In reply to your enquiries concerning the skull found in this immediate neighbourhood, I have to say that my attention was called to the spot by the workman who unearthed it, and before it was removed from its long resting-place. For the moment I was tempted to appropriate it there and then, but when I examined it more carefully I was struck by the undisturbed condition of the gravel in which it was embedded :— it seemed as though gravel and skull were deposited at the same time.
Since 1888 the gravel-beds in which the bones were found
