Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/81

Rh pit, two specimens had been taken from the lower part of the clay (4 in section). There can be little doubt, however, that they were found by Mr. Frere in the gravel below the "red-brick earth," as he says that "they lay in great numbers at the depth of about twelve feet in



a stratified soil, which was dug into for the purpose of raising clay for bricks. Under a foot and a half of vegetable earth was clay seven and a half feet thick, and beneath this one foot of sand with shells, and under this two feet of gravel, in which the shaped flints were found generally at the rate of five or six in a square yard. The manner in which the flint implements lay would lead to the persuasion that it was a place of their manufacture, and not of their accidental deposit. Their numbers were so great that the man who carried on the brickwork told me that, before he was aware of their being objects of curiosity, he had emptied baskets full of them into the ruts of the adjoining road."

As I have already mentioned, the place at which the clay is now excavated is some distance from that where Mr. Frere found the implements, and they are now very seldom met with—so seldom, that none of the men working at the clay-pit when I was there had ever seen one.

To the west of the road, in the pit that has been opened in Sir Edward Kerrison's park, a section of the beds has been exposed at the point marked E in general section, as shown in Fig. 8. The most remarkable feature in the section is the occurrence of the upper clay (2 in section), containing angular patches of red sand, like that seen in the "upper bowlder-clay" of other parts of the district. I cannot help thinking that, if this section had been open when Prof. Prestwich examined the deposits, he would have been led to modify his opinion respecting the relation of the deposits to the Glacial period. I myself believe this clay to be the upper bowlder-clay, and the sand with pebbles below it to be the "middle glacial sands and gravels."

To trace the "red-brick earth" (4 in section) down toward the lower bowlder-clay, I set some men to work, and had a shaft sunk—at