Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 25.djvu/584

452 materials are known to have been used in England for implements of this age. With these exceptions, all the specimens that have been found were formed from nodules of chalk-flint which it is probable had previously been long exposed upon the surface. Many of the flints found with the implements have been fractured by internal expansion, resulting probably from atmospheric influences; some of the implements themselves have been made from stones thus broken, and others were broken by the same means afterwards. Many points and butts are also found, which doubtless were broken in the process of manufacture, the fractured surface retaining precisely the same patina or stain as the worked surface.

Although the implements of this district bear a certain general resemblance to those with which we are familiar from the Somme, as well as to those of Salisbury, and Hoxne, and Icklingham, I think that some slight differences may be detected as regards shape and workmanship; and indeed it seems by no means certain that the implements found at Broomhill do not differ from those at Brandon. Thus at the former place they are often of a wedge-like form, resembling rudely a shoe or foot with a high instep, a variety which is not found at Brandon; while at the latter pits they sometimes occur of a large leaf-like pattern, about 8 inches long by 4 wide and only 2 inches thick at the thickest end, tapering off to $1⁄4$ of an inch. I have never met at Shrub Hill or Broomhill with any others of this form. In other localities differences have been noticed in the implements found in deposits quite as near to each other as these. Those of St. Acheul differ from those found at Montiers; and Mr. E. T. Stevens, who has so carefully studied the Wiltshire implements, assures me that the group found at Bemerton is of a type decidedly different from those at Milford Hill, a mile and a half distant, and that both of these differ from those found at Hill Head in Hampshire. Possibly each place may have had its own workmen, and perhaps in some cases different shapes were used to meet different requirements. It would be inconvenient to attempt here to give a detailed account of these differences; and, indeed, much longer and more careful observation is needed before we can arrive at any certain conclusions on the subject.

No shells, either fluviatile or marine, have as yet been discovered in either of the several deposits above described; but since my former paper was published, I have found at Thetford a thin seam of fine white sand, with a few land and freshwater shells, lying some feet above the gravel in which the implements occur. Two teeth of Elephas primigenius, as well as some bones of Bos Urus, have also been found in the Thetford gravel; and from Shrub Hill I have some fragments of the horns of deer, and teeth of some ruminant, probably deer also, as well as some teeth of a small species of horse, all much broken and rolled; with these exceptions I believe that no mammalian remains have hitherto been noticed in these beds, nor any other traces of man's presence than the flint and stone implements.

The geography of the district, with reference to other places in the neighbourhood in which implements have been found, will be