Page:VCH Hertfordshire 1.djvu/272

 A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE found in 1872 an ochreous, water-worn, oval implement, and at a some- what earlier date two other examples, one about a mile north of Bishop's Stortford, and the other farther north still, close to Pesterford Bridge, in Essex. The site of the Palaeolithic discoveries at Hitchin hardly lies within the watershed of the Lea, but is near the source of the Hiz, a stream that flows northward to join the Ouse. The implements were first dis- covered here about the year 1876 by a workman who had seen a woodcut of a specimen from the valley of the Somme in an illustrated periodical, and who at once recognized the identity of form between the worked flints from France and some which he had come across in the course of his work, digging clay for the manufacture of bricks at Hitchin. Attention was first called to them at a field meeting of the Watford Natural History Society in June, I877. 1 Since that time numerous implements, including large flakes, have been found in more than one of the clay-pits near Hitch- in, presenting various forms, among which, however, the pointed type predominates. A specimen is repre- sented in fig. 6. In 1896 an in- vestigation of the geological condi- tions of the deposits was undertaken at the cost of the British Association and the Royal Society, and was car- ried on by Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., who prepared a careful report upon the subject, published in the Proceed- ings of the Royal Society? The alluvial beds, which are of freshwater origin, present close analogies with those of Hoxne in Suffolk, which have also been exhaustively examined by Mr. Reid, and lie above the chalky boulder clay of the district. The deposits FIG. 6. beneath the Palaeolithic brick-earth fill a deep channel and contain a temperate flora, including such trees as the oak, ash, cornel, elder and alder ; and among the mammalian remains in the brick-earth are bones of rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and mammoth. The whole surface of the surrounding country has been so much modified by denudation subsequently to the formation of the implement-bearing beds, that it is difficult to form an idea as to whence the water from which they were deposited came, or whither it flowed. 1 Trans. Watford Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. i. p. Ixi. ; Ancient Stone Implements, 2nd ed. p. 536 ; Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Sac., viii. pis. x. and xii. 2 Vol. Ixi. (1897), p. 40 ; Proc. Geol. dssoc., xiv. (1896), p. 417, 228