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 A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the plain side, not illustrated, but seen on the edge views at bb. These were probably used for scraping flesh from bones, chiefly perhaps by the older folk who had no teeth equal to the task. Fig. 1 6 shows a peg-like tool made from a flake, the bulb of per- cussion being on the plain side at a. Many examples of tools of this nature, some more highly finished, have been found. They somewhat resemble the neolithic fabricator or strike-light. Fig. 15 A fossil from the chalk named Coscinopora globularis is common in the Bedford gravels. These curious fossils are each about the size of a cherry, white in colour and furnished with a natural perforation. Collections of them have several times been found in company with implements and flakes, and it is possible that palaeolithic people used them for personal decoration as beads. Many have been found with the natural orifice enlarged as if for more convenient insertion of a ligament. Examples from Bedford are in the British Museum. Until quite recent times it was customary to speak of palaeolithic tools as river-drift implements because they were almost invariably found associated with beds of gravel, sand and clay, which had previously been laid down by our present rivers. The implements nearest a river and on the lower terraces were considered to be the newer, and those on the higher terraces the older. From the first however certain implements found on certain high positions and more or less removed from the present rivers were suspected to be of a still greater age, and to belong to the river drift of streams which, owing to the then difFerent configuration of the country and a subsequent change in the valleys, did not run in the present river valleys. In some instances ancient affluents of present rivers, as shown by the contours on maps, must have been dry long prior to neo- lithic times, because neolithic implements and flakes are now spread generally all over the dry surfaces. There is a former affluent of the Lea of this class at No-man's-land Common near Wheathampstead, Herts, and when the dry banks of this earlier rivulet are excavated palaeolithic implements are found. A good palaeolithic flake was found by the writer at Dunstable in 1884. This, with one or two minor finds of the same class, and the finding of implements at Dunstable later on, led him to search the hills, 150