Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/595

Rh a short distance of the railway. As the staining and incrustation upon it were unlike those on the stones of the local gravel, and corresponded with those on the flints in the ballast of the railway, I was inclined to refer the implement to that source, and to believe that it had been brought from Oundle with the gravel, at that time used for ballast. A visit to the pit proved unfruitful, but I suggested that in all probability a prolonged search might result in adding the valley of the Nene to those in which palæolithic implements have been found. My suggestion has now been justified. In 1882 Mr. T. George, F.G.S., found in a ballast pit at Elton, about 5 miles N. of Oundle, an ochreous pointed implement, in colour and appearance identical with mine from Langley, and kindly added it to my collection.

At Overton Longville, or Little Orton, two miles S.W. of Peterborough, a spot visited by Sir Joseph Prestwich and myself in search of palæolithic implements about 1861, some were found a few years ago by the late Dowager Marchioness of Huntly.

The next valley to be considered is that of the Waveney, a river which, after a circuitous course of 53 miles, joins the Yare a few miles S.W. of Yarmouth, and passes through Breydon Water to the sea. It takes its rise, as has already been stated, at Lopham Ford, close by the source of the Little Ouse.

Up to the present time there is but one locality known in its valley, where palæolithic flint implements have been found; but this is of peculiar interest, on account of the discoveries having been observed and recorded before the close of the last century, and, therefore, at a time when speculations as to the great antiquity of the human race can hardly be said to have commenced. And yet Mr. John Frere, F.R.S., in the concise and able account which he gives of the discovery, shows himself to have been so much struck by the situation in which the implements were found as to be tempted to refer them "to a very remote period, indeed, even beyond that of the present world." Mr. Frere states that the implements or weapons, as he terms them, lay in great numbers at the depth of about 12 feet, in a stratified soil, which was dug into for the purpose of raising clay for bricks; and he gives a section of the strata. He states that shells, which he erroneously regarded as marine, occurred in sand at a depth of 9 feet, together with bones of great size, and that below this, in a gravelly soil, the flints were found. His account is illustrated by excellent engravings of two of the implements, which I was enabled to reproduce in illustration of my first Essay on Flint Implements from the Drift, in 1859, and which have since been copied, on a smaller