EARLY MAN in size from a split pea up to a five-shilling piece, or even larger, which chips are apparently due not to human agency, but to accidental violence. The surface of these chips in no w^ay resembles that of the implements themselves, but has undergone a change from the natural blackness of the newly-chipped flint to a porcelainous white, quite irrespective of the patina which the humanly-worked surfaces of the flint may have taken on. This chipping is a very remarkable and very instructive phenomenon. It means that at some time in the past history of these flints, after they had received their patination, they were subjected to some exceedingly rough usage, not by man but by nature ; a knocking about greater than that to which the stones of any other implementiferous gravels have been subjected ; for this curious chipping is practically confined to Warren Hill. Then these newly-chipped surfaces have undergone a fresh patination, but probably not in the gravels in which they are now found. In the first place the Warren Hill gravels are very sandy — so much so that they are often referred to as sand pits rather than gravel pits. They are one of the loosest and softest gravels that the writer is acquainted with ; the least likely of any therefore to show signs on the stones of extensive knocking about, in their course down to the gravels. The chipping would thus seem to be due to some previous journey under flood conditions, the last journey into their present position being a later episode in their history. And this view is borne out by the fact that implements with slight patination, which are generally of finer make, show less signs of rolling than those of more marked patination ; and have none of the chipping round the edge. They have in fact been fabricated after the tumultuous floods which chipped the older implements, and have therefore been subjected only to the milder diluvial conditions which gave rise to the present sandy gravels. But further, there is good reason for believing, contrary to the general view, that flints do not, in most cases at any rate, undergo staining in gravels. At Warren Hill the evidence already adduced is in favour of this view ; many of the implements being patinated on one side only, and the accidental chips being white rather than the colour of the original patina. The most cursory examination of palaeolithic gravels will show that in them the true palaeolithic patinations are rare amongst the stones composing the gravels. These true palaeolithic patinations are of various kinds ; but all of them are quite different from the prevailing patination of the gravels. This does not refer to humanly-worked stones only, but to all the flints in the gravels of true Palaeolithic Age, for the patinas on the humanly-worked stones do not differ from those on the accidentally split or chipped surfaces of the un- worked stones of the same period. Yet, the point bears repetition that flints with palaeolithic patinations, whether human or non-human, in most gravels are in a very small minority, not more perhaps than one in a thousand. How then can they have got their staining in, at any rate, the present gravels? Moreover, if the gravels be carefully examined it will be seen that there are flints in them which have evidently been broken in their course down into the gravel ; and the broken surfaces of these flints are quite black — wholly unpatinated. Therefore, to go back to the accidental chippings on many of the Warren Hill ovates with their porcelainous white patination, there is every reason to believe that these chippings date, not from the last diluvial action to which they have been exposed, but to some I 241 31
