Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/607

Rh also shells in the lower part of the reddish loam or brick-earth immediately above the clay. The shells are said to consist of Helix, Zua, Clausilia, Succinea, Carychium, Limnæa, Planorbis, Valvata, Pisidium, and Cyclas; to which Mr. J. Wood Mason, F.G.S., added Achatina, Bythinia, Pupa, and Velletia.

Fig. 453.—Highbury New Park.

On reading the account of this discovery, I was at once impressed with the possibility of the occurrence of palæolithic implements in the deposit; and accordingly in September, 1868, I visited the pit with the view of searching for them, taking with me my youngest son, Norman, who had a quick eye, and an almost instinctive power of recognizing a worked flint. Our search was soon rewarded, for immediately on descending into the lower part of the pit, where the shell-bearing beds were exposed, my son picked up the remarkably well-formed implement shown in Fig. 453. It was not in situ, but was lying in the bottom of the pit; and judging from the staining upon a portion of its surface, it appears to have been derived from the brick-earth, rather than from the more shelly beds below.

It is well adapted for being held in the hand as a sort of knife or chopper, having a thick rounded back formed of the natural crust of the nodule of flint from which it was formed. One face of it has been the result of a single blow, and its surface is that of a portion of a what irregular cone, at the apex of which the blow was struck, by