feet than that it is now supposed to occupy—its valley must have been
broader, and its bottom strewn with detritus of various kinds, in the
shape of gravel, sand, and clay, and, it may be, some larger blocks
of stone. In the further process of excavating by agents such as have
been described, it has also been seen, that it is in the highest degree
improbable that the succeeding floods and other transporting agents
should have entirely removed and obliterated the deposits left by those
of earlier date. We should, therefore, expect to find, at various
heights on the slope of the valley, remains of such beds of detritus,
and especially at points such as the junctions of affluents with the
river, and the inner side of the bends it makes in its course, which
would naturally be the least exposed to the violent invasion of the
stream. In these beds we might reasonably search for the remains of
the surface and freshwater life of the period; and had there been any
amelioration of climate during the process of excavation, a larger
proportion of silt and clay, and less of coarse gravel, in the lower
and more recent deposits, would testify to the fact. Looking also
at the power possessed by rivers of levelling the bottoms of their
valleys, during their successive changes of course, we might expect to
find in places, tracts of these old valley-bottoms left as terraces
on the slopes of the more deeply excavated valleys. The |674| upper
surface of any such relics of a former condition of things would, of
course, be covered with _débris_ and rain-washed clay, brought down
from a higher level on the slopes, but on digging into them their true
nature might be recognized.

Nearer the sea, and farther up the valleys, the state of things would
be somewhat different. At the mouth of the river, as has already been
pointed out, the declivity of the stream would have been greater, and
its excavating power therefore increased. If, as originally assumed,
the bed of the river, when the land was first elevated, was, at a mile
distant from the sea, 200 feet above its level, the declivity would be
200 feet to the mile; when the 200 feet level was 4 miles from the sea,
the slope would still be 50 feet to the mile; at 10 miles distance it
would still be 20 feet, and it would not be until the 200 feet level
was 15 miles from the sea that the ordinary slope of the bottom of the
Chalk valleys of Hertfordshire, which is about 13 feet 6 inches to the
mile, would be attained. In the meantime, however, if the sea were
encroaching on the shore, or were, owing to the nature of the rocks,
widening and extending that portion of the river subject to tidal
influences, the actual point of contact with the sea would be carried
far inland, and—assuming the rock traversed to be of one uniform nature
and hardness—it would be long before the river towards its mouth
ceased to have a greater declivity than nearer its source. We see,
then, that the amount of excavation effected by the river, during the
time necessary for the deepening of the valley by 100 feet, at a point
midway in its course, would, near the sea, have been twice as great,
or 200 feet. We should, therefore, expect to find beds of the same
age as those which, at the middle of its course, were 100 feet above
the river, at relatively twice that elevation near the mouth; and any
intermediate beds would also be proportionally higher above the then
existing stream, than contemporary beds farther up the valley.

At the heads of the valleys, the excavation would, on the contrary,
have been less than towards the middle of the course of the river;
partly owing to there always being less water present, partly to the
reduced liability to floods, and partly to other causes. The heads of
the valleys would, however, be constantly receding in all cases, and
their retrogression would in most instances be aided by springs issuing
from them. In cases where, from some geological cause, the heads of two
valleys running in opposite directions receded in the same line, we can
readily imagine their |675| meeting eventually at the watershed, and
cutting through it so as to form apparently but a single valley, though
on either side of the highest portion of its bottom, the waters flowed
in opposite directions.

The mention of springs recalls another denuding agent, which has
been already discussed in connection with caverns, and seems to have
assisted in moulding the surface of the country and in excavating the
valleys. It is well known that the water flowing in the streams of a
chalk-country contains, in solution, a considerable amount of chalk,
or rather, of bi-carbonate of lime; the water on entering the ground
deriving a certain amount of carbonic acid from the decaying vegetable
matter contained in the soil, and when thus charged, becoming capable
of dissolving a corresponding quantity of the chalk. The amount is
usually 17 or 18 grains in the gallon; and even in the Thames at
London, not a purely chalk-stream, there are about 14 grains. Taking
the proportion of 17 grains to the gallon, it will be found by
calculation that every inch of rain which falls over a square mile of
chalk-country, and passes off by springs, carries with it, in solution,
and without in the slightest degree interfering with its brightness,
no less than from 15 to 16 tons of solid chalk. The quantity of rain
which thus finds its way to the springs has, as already stated, been
ascertained by experiment to be as much as 9 inches per annum in
average seasons, giving an amount of about 140 tons of chalk thus
annually carried away from each square mile of country at the present
day; so that the loss is still going on at the rate of 140,000 tons of
dry chalk to each square mile in every ten centuries.

The lowering of level from this cause is probably not uniform over the
whole surface. For the acidulated water sinking into the chalk on the
top of a hill, and descending one or two hundred feet before reaching
the surface of “the subterranean reservoir,”[2769] might, in its almost
vertical passage, become saturated with carbonate of lime, and only
render the chalk through which it passed somewhat more porous, without
materially affecting the level of its surface. On the other hand, that
absorbed in a valley would probably, to some extent, acquire the chalk
which it eventually held in solution during its almost horizontal
passage to the point of its delivery by springs; and as this would be
at no great depth, the abstraction of solid matter would become more
perceptible on the surface, so that the level of the valley would be
lowered more |676| rapidly than that of the hill. With an increased
rainfall, such as we have supposed, this removal of solid matter by
solution must have been considerable; but still nothing in comparison
with that effected by the other denuding agencies which have been
mentioned. It is, moreover, to be borne in mind that, as will shortly
be seen, until the valleys had been excavated to a considerable depth,
the amount of water delivered by the springs would, with the same
rainfall, have been far less than at present. The springs would also,
to some extent, have been affected by the chalk being in a less porous
condition than it now is, owing to its not having lost so much of its
substance by the chemical action which has just been described.

Before comparing the actual phenomena with the results of the
conditions which have been assumed, it will be well to say a few
words as to the probable effects of an amelioration of climate, and
a diminution in the rainfall, upon a valley already excavated to
an average depth of 100 feet, such as has already been described.
It is evident that any transport of materials due to the action of
ice, by floating loose stones and pebbles from one part of the bed
of the stream to another, would be materially diminished; as would
also the number of floods resulting from the thawing of the winter
accumulation of ice and snow, and from rain falling on frozen ground.
The only remaining principal cause for floods would be the heavy fall
of rain during storms or wet seasons; but here, a comparatively slight
alteration in the conditions will have made a vast difference in the
results. When the valleys were once excavated to a certain depth, the
level of the springs or outfalls carrying off the accumulation of
water in the absorbent soil, would be proportionally reduced, as would
also be the line of permanent saturation in the chalk. The effect of
this would be that during any dry interval, the water contained in the
upper part of the chalk would gravitate downwards, until it reached the
subterranean reservoir of water saturating the chalk; and thus leave
the surface soil in the same absorbent condition as it is at present,
and capable of receiving a much greater amount of rain than formerly,
before any would flow from off its surface.

Even with a constant and excessive rainfall, the result of the
continued deepening of the valleys would be to cause more and more
to flow off by the springs, and less from the surface; but with the
valleys once deepened, a small diminution in the rainfall, or its more
even distribution over the whole year, might cause the |677| flow from
the surface almost entirely to cease, and allow the whole to be carried
off by the springs. Whenever this was the case, any great and rapid
excavation of the valleys from rain alone would be rendered almost
impossible; and with no extreme reduction in the total amount of annual
flow of the rivers, yet by their originating in perennial springs
subject to but slight variations, and from their being no longer to
any extent immediately connected with the surface drainage, there
would cease to be that immense difference between their maximum and
minimum volume, which must have formerly existed. The result of this
comparatively uniform flow would be a great diminution in the tendency
of any river to change its bed, and even if it occasionally received
a great accession of water, it would find relief by overflowing into
the wide valley due to its former more violent action. In the less
inclined portions of its valley, the parts now almost deserted by the
stream would be favourable for vegetation, such as would result in
the formation of peat, and any occasional overflowing of the banks
might, owing to the less torrential character of the inundations, have
a tendency to fill up and level these marginal spaces rather than to
excavate them deeper. The deposits of gravel, sand, and clay at the low
levels would also be more continuous than those at the higher.

In tracing the effects of subaërial action in forming valleys, I have
assumed the subsoil or rock in which they were formed to have been
chalk, as it is principally in valleys in the Chalk that the gravels
containing Palæolithic implements are known to occur. This is probably
on account of the greater natural abundance of flints in such valleys,
which of course led to implements being there chipped out in greater
numbers, as well as to their being less cared for, from their being
more easily replaced than they would be where flint was scarce. The
effects on other soft and absorbent soils would not materially differ
from those on chalk. On clay, the general amount of denudation would
perhaps be greater, but the valleys broader, and with less inclined
slopes on their sides. In a clay country we might, I think, expect to
find the old river-gravels not unfrequently at greater distances from
the existing streams than in a chalk-district.

It must, however, be borne in mind that in such a country the materials
from which river-gravels can be formed are usually absent, and can only
have been derived from older superficial beds, or brought from Chalk
higher up the valley. In some |678| valleys, partly or almost entirely
excavated in Pre-Glacial times, gravels belonging to the Glacial
Period exist, and tend to complicate the question of the more recent
River-drifts.

Any theory of the valleys having been excavated at some remote period
in some unknown manner, and then having been filled with gravels
derived from an unknown source, and again re-excavated, presents such
difficulties that, to my mind, it cannot well be entertained. If,
however, such a view be accepted, it seems to add to the time necessary
for the excavation of the valleys; as much of the rainfall might find a
subterranean vent at a low level through the gravel lining the bottom
of the filled-up valleys, and thus keep the upper soil in a more
absorbent condition and therefore less liable to erosion.

I must not, however, dwell too long upon this hypothetical case, which
perhaps is such as may not have found an absolutely exact analogue
in nature, but which may yet, I think, be accepted as a fair typical
example of the results which, under the supposed conditions, must,
judging from what we know of the action of subaërial causes, in all
probability have ensued.

Let us now compare the phenomena as we find them in the gravel-beds of
our present river-valleys, with those of the hypothetical case, and we
shall, I think, find them coincide in a remarkable manner.

In the first place, the constituent parts of the gravels of the beds
of Drift containing Palæolithic implements are always, petrologically,
such as are to be found in the existing river-basins, as they must
also of necessity have been in the hypothetical case. This fact, which
holds good both in France and England, has been insisted on by Sir
Joseph Prestwich, and such insistency cannot be too often reiterated.
Where old superficial marine deposits of the Glacial or any other
period, consisting of pebbles of various ages and origins, exist within
a river-basin, there also will such pebbles be found in its gravels,
but the originally derivative character of the pebbles prevents any
strong argument being founded upon their presence. Where, however,
no such beds exist, the case can clearly be made out. Unless a river
traverses a granite or slate country, no granite or slate is found in
the Quaternary gravels of its valley: unless it passes over Oolite,
Purbeck, or Greensand, no blocks or pebbles of these rocks occur. This
fact suffices to prove that the gravels are due to some local cause,
such as river-action, and not to any general submergence or supposed
|679| “wave of translation,” which would of necessity bring in
materials not to be found in the existing basins.

That the various deposits resulting from a flooded river, should
contain some of the land and freshwater shells, and animal bones of the
period, is, as has been shown, most natural. Such shells and remains
are of constant occurrence in the Quaternary gravels. If they prove
nothing else, their evidence as to the freshwater origin of the beds
must be accepted as conclusive. It is true that in all cases such land
and freshwater remains have not as yet been found; but if in a dozen
instances we find beds of a certain character containing these remains,
and also flint instruments wrought by the hand of man; and in a dozen
other instances, similar beds in analogous positions, also containing
implements of the same kind, but, so far as is known, no such organic
remains; we are justified in regarding both sets of beds as due to
the same original cause, and in believing that the organic remains,
if actually absent, are so from some accidental circumstance. We may
indeed accept the implements as being truly characteristic fossils of
a certain class of deposits. The character of the beds, consisting as
they do, of gravel, sand, and fine silt, brick-earth or loess, and
their manner of deposition, are also absolutely in accordance with the
river-hypothesis.

On the higher levels above but near the valleys, we frequently find
these beds at a considerable distance from the existing stream; we
find them at all levels on the flanks of the valleys, and occasionally
almost at their bottom, or even below it. In these lower beds, the
implements, if of the same form and character as those in the upper
beds nearer the source, are, in accordance with what would be the case
under the hypothesis, very frequently much rolled and water-worn.
The beds at the low level are also usually, so far as the gravel is
concerned, of a finer character than those at the high level, and
present a greater abundance of sand and brick-earth. They seem, in
fact, indicative of some such amelioration of climate as that supposed.

Looking again at the position of the deposits with regard to the
neighbouring rivers, we find them, as a rule, exactly in such positions
as might have been expected, had their presence been due to the
action of a stream in the process of excavating its valley, in such
a manner as that described. So constantly is this the case, that a
practised geologist, from a mere inspection of the Ordnance map, could
with almost certainty predict where deposits |680| of River-drift
would occur, of such an age and character as to be likely to contain
Palæolithic implements. In more than one instance, indeed, as has
already been mentioned, the probability of certain gravels containing
these relics of human art, was pointed out before their actual
discovery.

These are some, but by no means all, of the points in which the actual
phenomena agree with those which must have resulted from river-action
such as suggested in the hypothesis, and they are alone sufficient to
raise the strongest presumption that the phenomena are due to such
action, and that the theory that would account for them in this manner,
cannot be far from the truth.

I will, however, now pass in review some of the principal localities
where Palæolithic implements have been found in Drift-deposits, and see
what other points of accordance, and what difficulties, if any, they
present.

Taking first the basin of the Ouse and its tributaries, we find
at Biddenham, near Bedford, one of the principal localities for
Drift-implements, the gravel on the inner side of a bold sweep made
by the river, and from forty to fifty feet above it. Its constituent
stones are all derived either from the rocks in the neighbourhood, or
from the Glacial beds which cap them, and which have evidently been cut
through by the river. Throughout the beds are seams containing numerous
freshwater shells, mixed with some derived from the land and from
marshy places; numerous bones of terrestrial mammals also occur. In the
valley of the Lark remains of such shells occur at Bury St. Edmunds, in
the same beds as the implements. Farther down, at Icklingham, the beds
at Rampart Field cap a rounded knoll on the inner side of a curve of
the river, which appears, however, to have somewhat straightened its
course since they were deposited. Below Icklingham, the whole surface
of the country, and its drainage, have been so much modified by the
invasion of the sea, which produced the wide level of the Fens, that we
should expect to find any deposits of an ancient river, which existed
before that great planing down of the adjacent country, in somewhat
anomalous positions.

I need not here enter into the history of the origin of the Fens; it is
enough to say that the subsoil of almost the whole district consists
of clays, belonging either to the Oolitic or Cretaceous series, and
unprotected by any rocks of a more durable nature towards the sea,
which has thus been enabled to invade it. The presence of the sea is
attested in various localities by marine |681| remains. _Buccinum_,
_Trophon_, _Littorina_, _Cardium_, and _Ostrea_ are abundant in the
gravel at March.[2770] In the valley of the Nene, near Peterborough,
oysters and other marine shells occur, mixed with those of land and
freshwater origin. In Whittlesea Mere, remains of walrus and seal, and
sea shells are found; while so far south as Waterbeach, less than ten
miles from Cambridge, remains of whale have been discovered.

The old land-surface having been thus destroyed, we cannot with
certainty trace the course of the ancient representative of the river
Lark, below Mildenhall; it seems, however, to have proceeded northwards
by Eriswell and Lakenheath, to join the Little Ouse. At Eriswell, a
gravel of the same character as that near Mildenhall, occurs on the
slope of the hill towards the Fen; but in it, as yet, few implements
are recorded to have been found. At Lakenheath, however, they occur in
the gravel now capping the hill overlooking the Fen, as well as on the
slope.

Owing to the distance of these beds from any existing rivers, the
late Mr. Flower[2771] found great difficulty in reconciling them with
any theory which would account for their presence by the action of
rivers. If, however, we regard the great denudation of the Fen country
as subsequent in date to the deposit of the gravels, it appears to me
that any difficulty on this point vanishes. That this denudation was in
fact, at all events in part, subsequent to the deposit of the gravels,
is proved by the position of the beds at Shrub Hill, which there cap a
small area of Gault, and which, being above the general level of the
Fens, can hardly have been deposited in the position they now occupy,
when the configuration of the country was at all like what it now is.
Such beds must, on the contrary, have been deposited in the bottom of a
valley; and it appears as if in this case, by their superior hardness
to the clay around them, or from some other accidental cause, they had
protected this small spot from tidal action, which in the adjacent
river, previously to the construction of Denver Sluice, extended nearly
as far as Brandon.

The rolled condition of so many of the implements found at Shrub Hill,
proves that they must have been transported some distance by water,
from beds of a higher level.

Turning now to the existing valley of the Little Ouse, we find, at
Brandon Down, the gravel occupying the summit of a high ridge of land
almost at right angles to the present course of the |682| river. It is
difficult to account for its occurring in this position, unless we are
to suppose that at an early period before the complete denudation of
the Fen country, and while the Boulder Clay still covered the surface
of the Chalk, and the level of saturation was higher in the latter
than at present, a tributary stream, possibly the old representative
of the Lark, flowed into the Little Ouse near this spot, and the
gravel was deposited on the tongue of land near the confluence. The
country drained by the Little Ouse seems at one time to have been
almost covered by Glacial deposits, including beds of shingle, composed
for the greater part of quartzite pebbles. The beds at Brandon Down
are nearer the sea than any analogous beds towards the source of the
stream, and occupy a higher position relatively to the existing river,
being 90 feet above it. If they resulted from river-action, they
would, in accordance with the hypothesis, be among the oldest of the
river-deposits; and would, as indeed they do, consequently contain a
far larger proportion of the quartzite pebbles than those of somewhat
later age and farther up the valley.

At Bromehill, where the drift is but a few feet higher than the present
level of the stream, and would, in accordance with the hypothesis,
belong to a later period, there are but few of these quartzite pebbles,
but the gravel contains a very large proportion of rolled fragments of
chalk, which, so far as I have observed, are absent in the probably
older beds, at Brandon Down; the implements also are frequently
much rolled and water-worn. This fact is also in accordance with
the hypothesis, for the river at the time of the formation of these
lower beds would, in the lower part of its course, have completely
cut through the Glacial deposits above the Chalk, and would have been
attacking the Chalk itself. There is also an abundance of rolled chalk
in the Shrub Hill beds, which seem to be of much the same age. In
the valley of the Lark, the rolled chalk pebbles occur in gravels at
a somewhat greater elevation. Higher up the Little Ouse, the gravel
at Santon Downham occupies the slope of a hill on the inner side of
a great sweep of the river, while at Thetford, the beds form a long
terrace by the side of the stream, with a rather abrupt slope towards
it. Here also, land and freshwater shells have been found in the
gravel, but neither these nor implements have as yet been observed in
the gravels of the valley of the Little Ouse, or of its tributaries,
above Thetford.

Tracing the main stream back to its source, we find that both |683|
the Little Ouse and the Waveney, the one flowing westward, and
the other eastward, take their rise in the same valley, and within
a few hundred yards of each other, at Lopham Ford. With regard to
the elevation of this spot above the sea-level, there has been some
diversity of opinion. On the Greenough map, published by the Geological
Society, it is erroneously stated at 15 feet; and Mr. Flower,[2772]
in arguing in favour of his views, that the beds at Brandon are not
connected with any river-action, assigns it a height of only 23 feet
above high-water mark. That this also is erroneous can be readily
shown, for Sir Joseph Prestwich[2773] has recorded the level of the
Waveney at Moor Bridge, near Hoxne, ten miles below its source, as
being 59 feet 9 inches above high-water mark at Yarmouth. Mr. Alger,
of Diss, who has surveyed the district, informs me that the level at
Lopham Ford is 75 feet 3 inches above high-water mark; and as by actual
survey he found the fall, from the head of the Waveney to Hoxne Mill,
to be upwards of 15 feet, there can be little doubt of this level being
approximately correct. Still, the gravel beds at Brandon being upwards
of 90 feet above high-water mark, there can be no doubt of their being
at an elevation actually above the source of the present stream; and
at first sight, this fact appears difficult of reconciliation with
the view that they are due to fluviatile action. Without, however,
calling to aid any possible oscillations in the level of the land,
varying in amount at different parts of the course of the stream, an
examination of the local geological conditions suffices to throw light
on the causes, why the erosion of the land at the sources of the Little
Ouse and Waveney has been abnormally great; so that not only have the
streams excavated back the heads of their respective valleys until they
have met, but their inclination at the upper part of their course,
instead of being as usual in chalk countries at the rate of 12 to 18
feet in a mile, is only about 18 inches.

The general level of the country for some distance around Lopham Ford
is at least 100 feet above it, and the Chalk and the superimposed beds
are for the most part covered with a deposit of impervious Boulder
Clay, through which the valleys of the Little Ouse and of the Waveney
have been cut. But, at the time of the last emergence of this district
of country from beneath the sea, this clay must have been continuous
across the tract since |684| excavated, so that at that time the
sources of the streams flowing in either direction must have been at
least 100 feet above their present level, and 80 feet above the gravels
at Brandon Down, and probably at some distance apart. That the heads of
the two streams should have cut back their valleys, and at last have
met, appears to be due to the fact that, previously to the covering
of Boulder Clay being deposited, there existed an old depression in
the Chalk, which had been filled with laminated sandy clays, either
Glacial or belonging to what is known by geologists as the Chillesford
series. These being more easily acted on than the chalk by running
water, led the streams to follow the course of the old depression which
they filled, and it is to their presence that the small inclination of
the upper part of the valley of the Waveney appears to be mainly due.
Another cause is to be found in the country near Lopham Ford being
coated with clay, so that the streams, even at the present day, exhibit
the remarkable phenomenon of being liable to floods at their source. An
isolated hill, about 30 feet high, formed of the laminated beds, and
with a slight capping of gravel, still remains in the valley of the
Waveney, near Redgrave, to show the nature of the beds which have been
removed.

The only spot in the valley of the Waveney, where as yet Palæolithic
implements have been found, is at Hoxne, where the summit of the
beds is about 111 feet above high-water mark at Yarmouth, and though
at a higher level than the existing source of the Waveney, probably
much below the level of its earlier source. Since the beds were
deposited, the surface of the ground in the neighbourhood has been
completely remodelled by subaërial denudation, and they now lie in a
trough on the summit of a hill,[2774] both sides of which slope down
to small streams which are tributary to the Waveney, and are still
at work cutting out their valleys in the Boulder Clay. The beds in
which the implements occur are beyond all doubt of freshwater origin,
being full of freshwater shells. The trough in which they lie, has
much the appearance of the deserted bed of a river, silted up under
more lacustrine conditions. Such a change in the position of a
river-bed, and its subsequent infilling, is quite in accordance with
the hypothetical case of river-action, especially when, as here, its
eventual valley had not been distinctly carved out.

The phenomena at Hoxne have lately been more fully examined |685| by
Mr. Clement Reid,[2775] by means of grants from the British Association
and the Royal Society; and the views that I expressed in 1872 have been
in the main corroborated. The deposits are proved to be distinctly
more recent than the Chalky Boulder Clay of the district, and there
is evidence of oscillations in climate since the valley was formed in
which the lacustrine beds were laid down, and before any Palæolithic
implements or the brick-earth containing them had been deposited.

The beds at High Lodge, near Mildenhall, are of somewhat similar
character to those at Hoxne, though occupying a depression on the
slope of a hill, instead of a trough on the summit; and were probably
deposited under nearly the same circumstances, though as yet no
testaceous remains have been found in them.

Turning south, to the valley of the Thames, we find the gravel-beds
at Acton and Ealing, though occasionally at a higher level, forming
a terrace 80 or 90 feet above Ordnance Datum, along the side of the
broad valley, at a height of some 50 feet above the general surface
of the valley. In the bottom of this are spread out other beds of
gravel, sand, and brick-earth, exactly as might be expected on the
river-hypothesis; while at Highbury New Park, and Hackney Down, we
have beds of the same character, which contain land and freshwater
shells and flint implements, at a height, in some cases, of 100 feet
above Ordnance Datum. The presence of these beds in such a position,
consisting, as they do at Highbury, of sand and brick-earth, such as
can only have been deposited in comparatively tranquil water, involves
the necessity either of a large lake having existed at the spot, or of
its having been within access of the flood-waters of the river. But
either of these conditions is impossible, unless we are to suppose that
the lower part of valley of the Thames, in which London now stands, was
at that time non-existent. It must, therefore, have been subsequently
excavated. But again, at lower levels at Hackney Down, and in Gray’s
Inn Lane, we have gravels of a more distinctly fluviatile character,
and also containing palæolithic implements. The existence, character,
and position of all these beds is, therefore, perfectly in accordance
with the theory of the excavation of the valley by the river, and
it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to account for them
satisfactorily in any other manner.

At Hitchin beds of much the same character occur, which there also are
newer than the Boulder Clay of the district. |686|

At Caddington the discoveries are quite consistent with the
hypothesis, but point to a period when the excavations of the existent
valleys had made but little progress.

Higher up the Thames valley at Reading and at Oxford the phenomena are
all in accordance with the hypothesis; at the former place the river
has deepened its valley to the extent of at least 100 feet.

The discoveries in the gravels capping the North Downs and those
made near Ightham and Limpsfield in the transverse valley at the
foot of the Downs, seem at first sight difficult to reconcile with
any river-theory. But assuming that the beds capping the hills were
at one time continuous with others in the Wealden area, and that the
transverse valley was produced by denudation at a later date, the
difficulties disappear, though the time requisite to effect such
superficial changes may seem to be immense.

Passing by other localities where implements have been found in the
valley of the Thames, such as Swanscombe and Northfleet, though it
may be observed that the gravels in which they have occurred are, on
the river-theory, exactly where they might have been expected to be
present, we come to the beds near Reculver, where they have been found
in large numbers. Looking, however, at the enormous encroachment of
the sea, even within the last few centuries, upon the soft cliffs of
sand and clay at that spot, it is difficult to form any satisfactory
idea of the conditions under which a river may have flowed near the
spot at a remote period, or of the position of the coast at the time.
Where, however, as is here the case, a large tract of land has been
washed away, which must of necessity have had its system of superficial
drainage by streams, and may possibly have had rivers passing through
it, which now, owing to the altered conditions, find their way into
the sea at a point much nearer their source than formerly, we should
expect to find on the top of the cliffs traces of the former state of
things; and where any portion of the slope of an old valley remained,
to see its gravels, though now so close to the sea, at a height far
above its level. Still, it is hard to say whether the implement-bearing
beds at Reculver are connected with the old valley of the Thames, or
with that of some other stream which has now disappeared, but of which
the upper portion is to be traced in the Swale, which now separates the
Isle of Sheppey from Kent, and which appears to afford, in its junction
with the West Swale and Long Reach, an instance of two valleys being
gradually eroded inland until they met. The beds may even be connected
with the |687| valley of the Stour; for it is by no means impossible
that the present second and northward mouth of that stream may run
along the valley of an old river, which originally flowed southward
past Reculver, and joined the old representative of the Stour,
somewhere to the south of where is now the village of Sarre.

The great tract of gravel which at some little distance inland fringes
the East Essex coast, between Shoeburyness[2776] and the Blackwater
estuary, may also be connected with some old river; but as yet no
well-defined implements or freshwater shells have been found in
it, though Mr. Whitaker has discovered shells near Southend. The
fluvio-marine deposits at a lower level at Clacton, just north of
the Blackwater, like those at Chislet, in Kent, seem to belong to a
somewhat later period, when the rivers had so far deepened their beds
as to have become tidal.

Though no land or freshwater shells have as yet been found in the
gravel beds near Canterbury, yet their position is quite in accordance
with the theory of the excavation of the valley by river-action; and
here as elsewhere the implements from the lower beds are often much
water-worn.

The superficial deposits of the south of Hampshire and the Isle of
Wight, and in a lesser degree those of the neighbouring counties,
have been fully discussed in an able paper by Mr. T. Codrington,
F.G.S.,[2777] though since it was published a large number of
implements has been found near Bournemouth, Barton, and Hordwell. He
has pointed out that the whole of the New Forest, between Poole and
Southampton Water, appears at one time to have been an extensive plain,
with a gradual slope to the south, very generally covered with gravel
and brick-earth. This has since been in great part cut up, and over
large areas entirely removed by the action of the streams and rivers,
which latter flow in well-defined valleys.

The formation of this table-land and the overlying deposit of gravel
which, in places far inland, is found at a height of more than 420 feet
above the present sea-level, appears to be due to marine action, though
as yet no marine remains have been discovered in it. Sea-shells have,
however, been found by Sir Joseph Prestwich[2778] in an old sea-beach
at Waterbeach, near Goodwood, and similar beds, at Avisford Bridge,
near Arundel, occur at a height of 80 or 100 feet above the sea. We
seem, then, here to have evidence |688| of a considerable elevation
of the land from beneath the sea; and as the gravel in places overlies
late Tertiary beds, this must have taken place at a comparatively late
geological epoch. When rivers run through a tract of country covered
with a marine gravel of this kind, itself apparently deposited in a
somewhat contracted area, it is, in the absence of organic remains,
difficult to distinguish the reconstructed gravels resulting from
fluviatile action, from the older beds. Any one, however, who is
acquainted with the country, or who will examine Mr. Codrington’s map,
will see what an enormous denudation has been effected in this great
sheet of gravel, by rivers and streams, and by subäerial action. When
once the protecting gravel has been cut through, and the soft Tertiary
beds of sand and clay below have been reached, the process seems to
go on with great rapidity. A large tract of land west of Southampton
appears to have been in this way almost cleared of its gravel, of which
but patches are left. Even the principal portion of the old table-land
which has survived, that to the east and south-east of Fordingbridge,
is deeply cut into by numerous valleys, many of a depth of 200 feet.
The existence of these valleys is clearly in accordance with the river
theory.

Let us now examine the discoveries in the valleys of the Test and of
the Itchen from this point of view. Looking at the numerous instances
of the finding of flint implements in gravels containing terrestrial
and freshwater remains, and looking at the improbability of their
occurring in a purely marine deposit, I venture to regard them as being
equally characteristic of freshwater deposits as any organic fossils,
and to claim the beds in which they occur as being of freshwater origin.

At Southampton several implements have been found in the pits upon the
Common at heights ranging from 80 to 150 feet above the sea-level. The
gravel there slopes at a considerably greater inclination than that
of the table-land nearer Chilworth, with which it is continuous, and
from which it would appear to have been in part derived. It occupies
a tongue of land between the valley of the Itchen and that of the
Test, now widened out by tidal action. It is in places covered by
brick-earth, and its position and character are quite in accordance
with a fluviatile origin. If, from their proximity to the apparently
marine gravels, we assume these beds to belong to an early period in
the history of the excavation of the valley, their high position above
the present tidal stream is such as, according to the hypothesis, was
to be expected. |689|

The gravels found lower down the course of the river, at Hill Head,
Brown Down, and Lee on the Solent, appear to belong to a somewhat later
period; and to bear much the same relation to those of Southampton
Common, as do the beds at Shrub Hill to those of Brandon Down. As I
pointed out long ago, “There can be but little doubt that these gravel
beds are merely an extension of the valley-gravels of the rivers
Test, Itchen, Hamble, and other streams, which at the time they were
deposited, flowed at this spot in one united broad stream, at an
elevation of some forty feet above the existing level of their outfall,
over a country which has since, by erosive action, been in part
converted into the Southampton Water.”[2779] We shall shortly have to
revert to this circumstance; but before returning to the coast, we must
take a short glance at the features of the discoveries near Salisbury.

In the neighbourhood of this city there can be no doubt of the deposits
being thoroughly in accordance with the river theory. The Fisherton
and Milford Hill beds occupy points or spurs of land, in the forks
above the junction of streams, or precisely those spots in which their
presence was to be expected. There are the usual beds of gravel, sand,
and clay, the usual bones of the Quaternary fauna, some representing
what are now Arctic species, and therefore presumably indicative of
a severer climate than at present; and the usual land and freshwater
shells. Though the valleys, being confluent, are excavated to the
same depth, yet, on examination, their sectional areas will be found
to be approximately proportional to the extent of country drained by
the rivers still flowing through them. At Milford Hill, the deposit
is cut off from the main spur of land by a kind of transverse valley,
about thirty feet in depth, besides having on either side a valley some
100 feet deep. On any hypothesis of the beds having been deposited
by aqueous action—and no other can for a moment be entertained—these
valleys must have been mainly excavated since the deposition of the
gravels. For had the valleys at that time existed, we can conceive
of no conditions under which a body of water sufficient to fill the
valleys to their summit, and able to carry along detrital matter with
it, would leave its heavy contents at the top of the hills instead of
at the bottom. The old fluviatile beds occur also at various levels
on the slopes, in complete accordance with the theory of gradual
excavation; and farther down the valley, at |690| Fordingbridge, we
find them again occurring with remains of _Elephas primigenius_ at
about forty feet above the river.

The circumstances of the discoveries at Bournemouth seem at first sight
almost irreconcilable with any river-hypothesis; as it is difficult to
conceive how gravels capping the cliffs along the sea-shore for miles,
and at an elevation of from 130 to 90 feet above its level, can have
been deposited in such a position by the agency of a stream. And yet
on a closer examination of the case, all such difficulties vanish, and
the ancient existence of a river at such an elevation, and running
in such a direction that it would leave these gravels to testify
to its former course, seems absolutely demonstrable. Without being
aware of the results at which others had arrived, I came, after due
consideration of the facts of the case, to the conclusion that, as has
already been mentioned in an earlier page, there must in ancient times
have existed a river draining an extensive tract of country along the
southern coast, and flowing in an easterly direction; and that of this
river a portion still survives in an altered and enlarged condition as
the Solent Sea, which separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland.
Mr. Codrington, whose paper I have already so often quoted, arrived
on independent grounds at substantially the same conclusion. But at
an earlier epoch still—in 1862—before any flint implements had been
found at Bournemouth, or indeed in any of the gravels of the South of
England, the late Rev. W. Fox,[2780] of Brixton, in the Isle of Wight,
published nearly similar views as to the origin of the Solent. As his
opinions cannot by any possibility be supposed to have been influenced
by preconceived views as to the antiquity of man, I prefer stating the
case, in the first instance, in his words rather than in my own:—“The
severance of this island (the Isle of Wight) from the mainland, it
appears to me, was effected under very unusual circumstances, and at a
very distant period. The present channel of the Solent, being pretty
nearly equally deep and equally broad throughout its entire length
of twelve or fourteen miles, proves at once that it was not formed
in the usual way of island-severing channels, that is, by gradual
encroachments of the sea on the two opposite sides of a narrow neck
of land” . . . “it is to be accounted for, therefore, not by the
excavations of a gradually approaching sea, but, as I shall hereafter
have to attempt to show, by its being originally the trunk or outlet
of a very considerable river.” . . . “Whoever, as a geologist, |691|
examines the vertical strata of the Chalk at the Needles, nay, and
throughout the whole length of the Isle of Wight, and the strata of the
same rock in exactly the same unusual position on the bold white cliff
on the Dorsetshire coast some twenty miles westward of the Needles,
will not doubt but that the two promontories were once united, forming
a rocky neck of land from Dorset to the Needles. This chain of chalk
might, or might not, be so cleft in twain as to allow the rivers of
Dorset and Wilts to find a passage through them to the main ocean. My
opinion, however, is that they had no such outlet, but that at that
far distant period, the entire drainage of more than two counties,
embracing the rivers that join the sea at Poole and Christchurch,
flowed through what is now called Christchurch Bay, down the Solent,
and joined the sea at Spithead.”

“According to this theory, the Solent was at that time an estuary
somewhat like the Southampton Water, having but one opening to the
British Channel, but of so much more importance than the latter as it
was fed by a vastly greater flow of fresh water.” “Of course, according
to this view, the sea would lose its original condition as an estuary
at the time when the British Channel had so far made a breach through
the chain of rocks connecting the Isle of Wight with Dorsetshire as
to give an opening into itself for the Dorsetshire rivers, somewhere
opposite to the town of Christchurch. From that time forth the Solent
would become what it is at present, losing its character as an estuary,
and assuming that of a long narrow sea.” . . . “The distant period at
which such changes took place it would be hopeless to guess at, amid
the dimness of the data on which calculations could be founded. It
could not be less, however, than many thousands of years, seeing that
since that time, the British Channel has not only made a broad breach
of twenty miles through a chain of slowly yielding rocks, but has also
pushed its way gradually across the broad extent of the Poole and
Christchurch Bays.”

Such is the theory of Mr. Fox, which places the probable course of
events fully and fairly before our view. I see in it but little on
which to comment, except that it does not appear to have sufficiently
taken into account the widening of the Solent subsequently to the
time of its becoming a channel of the sea; and that in a passage,
which I have not quoted, Mr. Fox estimates the drainage area of the
ancient river as but little inferior to that of the Thames or Humber.
Taking the basins of all the streams discharging |692| into the sea
between Ballard Down, near Poole, on the west, and Calshot Castle and
the Medina on the east, but not including the latter river, I find
that, according to the Ordnance Map,[2781] the present land area which
would have drained into an ancient river such as that supposed, is
1,617 square miles. To this may be added another 100 square miles,
representing the area included between the present coast and an
extension of the chalk downs from Ballard Down to the Needles, the
whole of which has been washed away; though within this large area,
the present depth of the sea attains in but very few places to ten
fathoms. The drainage area of the ancient river Solent can therefore
have been but about one-third of that of the Thames and its affluents,
unless we are to suppose that, as is the case in the neighbourhood of
Carisbrooke Castle and with the Medina, a portion of land to the south
of the old chalk downs drained northward through some gap in the range
of hills. That such land existed seems probable, from the occurrence of
gravels with elephant remains along the south-west coast of the Isle of
Wight at an elevation of 80 feet and upwards above the sea, which, Mr.
Codrington has suggested, may have been deposited by tributary streams
of a river flowing northwards through the chalk range to the Solent.
But even with any such addition the area drained by the old River
Solent can hardly have been half that of the basin of the Thames.

With regard, however, to the former existence of this range of chalk
hills and the land to the north of them, Mr. Codrington has shown, in
the paper already so often quoted, that the spreading out of the marine
gravel, and the levelling of the table-lands was probably effected
in an inlet of the sea, shut in on the southern side by land which
connected the Isle of Wight with the mainland, and opening to the
eastward. Assuming, then, the existence of this ridge of high land, it
is evident, as Mr. Fox has pointed out, that the only outlet for the
rivers now represented by the Frome, the Trent or Piddle, the Stour,
Blackwater, Avon, and other streams now discharging into the sea, must
have been by an eastward channel, in fact, a continuation of the rivers
now discharging through Poole Harbour. The course of such a river would
naturally be guided, in the first instance, by the configuration of
the surface of the old marine gravels of the sloping table-land. This,
as has been shown, slopes upward from the present coast northward, and
attains its highest level inland; but traces of the same gravel occur
also in the Isle of Wight, though it there |693| slopes upward in a
southerly direction, attaining a height of 368 feet at St. George’s
Down, but being only from 100 to 160 feet above the sea in various
places along the northern shore of the island, at a distance of about
a mile inland. It appears, therefore, that there must originally have
been a valley running east and west in the old marine gravel, forming
a natural course for the drainage of the country, and probably finding
its way towards the sea, somewhere within the space now occupied by the
Solent and Spithead, though not actually discharging into the sea until
it had attained some distance eastward.

Evidence as to the highest level at which freshwater action removed
and re-deposited the marine gravel on the southern slope of the valley
is at present wanting; but, judging from a section across the Isle of
Wight from St. George’s Down to Norris Castle, given by Mr. Codrington,
the declivity is so much more rapid below the 160 feet level than above
it, that the ancient river may have commenced its action at about that
level. How far eastward the Isle of Wight may have extended at that
time it is difficult to say; but from the enormous denudation of land
to the west, and the range of the ten-fathom line, there may probably
have been land at all events as far east as opposite to Selsey, the
extensive estuarine beds at which place, containing remains of _Elephas
primigenius_,[2782] are possibly connected with this old river.

The precise manner in which the Foreland gravels and brick-earth, in
which Mr. Codrington found a palæolithic implement at 85 feet above the
sea-level, were connected with the old river-deposits, is difficult to
determine. Mr. Codrington is inclined to think that a rise of land to
the extent of 70 or 80 feet must have taken place since the deposition
of the brick-earth in which the flint implement was embedded, but
this to me seems unnecessary. It is, however, unsafe to speculate on
a single specimen found in such a position. The implements found at
Seaview and Bembridge may have been washed out of gravel-beds at a
lower level than those of the Foreland, or even have been transported
for some distance by marine currents.

Turning to Bournemouth, where so many more have been found, the highest
and most westerly point at which implements have occurred appears to be
about 130 feet above the sea.[2783] Farther |694| east, near Boscombe,
the level is about 120 feet; midway between that spot and Hengistbury
Head, the height of the gravel is 90 feet; at High Cliff, 84 feet; at
Hordwell, where implements abound, a short distance inland, 60 feet;
and about midway along the northern shore of the Solent, 50 feet.
The surface of the ground is, of course, much cut up by the numerous
streams coming in from the north; but the general fall of the gravel
from west to east is perfectly in accordance with its having been
deposited in the valley of an ancient river running in this direction,
the whole of the southern side of which has since been carried away by
the sea. Whether the old river had become tidal so far west as Hurst
Castle, when first it was intercepted by the sea to the south, does
not appear to me to be a matter of importance, inasmuch as no doubt a
valley was already formed, along the course of which the encroachments
of the sea would be more rapid than where the cliffs were higher, and
more solid matter had to be removed. That the valley, in which is now
Southampton Water, was also originally, for the most part, scooped out
by the rivers coming from the north, which in remote times flowed into
the old River Solent, is, I think, beyond all reasonable doubt. The
increased volume of the ancient river, after receiving so important
an affluent, is evinced by the widening of the channel, from Calshot
Castle eastward by Spithead, to a full third more than it is to the
west, along what is now the Solent Sea.

As to the character of the gravels at Bournemouth, it is, as already
observed, hard to distinguish those presumably of fluviatile origin
from the older and probably marine beds. In the railway-cutting between
Bournemouth and Christchurch, I thought, however, that in places I
could trace the superposition of the one upon the other. The more
recent deposits contain water-worn fragments of quartz, granite, and
porphyry, as was noticed long ago by Mr. Godwin-Austen,[2784] who, from
this circumstance, saw reason for connecting them with the gravels
capping the tabular hills of Devon and Dorset to the west.

It is, of course, evident that at the period when the river ran at this
high level, past the spot where now is Bournemouth, all the land to the
immediate west must have been far higher than it is at present, and
that Poole Harbour could not have existed. In attempting to reconstruct
the map of a country, the shores of which have been much wasted by
the sea, in order to show what |695| must have been at some remote
period the old coast-line, the task is rendered difficult and within
certain limits impossible by the absence of any evidence as to the
elevation above the sea of the land removed, and as to the channels
along which the sea could work. In this case, however, there is a
strong presumption as to the unbroken continuity of the chalk-range,
and of its elevation having been much the same throughout, as it now is
at both ends of the breach. The general character of the beds above the
Chalk, so far as their power of resistance to water-action goes, seems
also much the same at either extremity; though perhaps the beds at
the Isle of Wight end of the breach are somewhat the harder. Assuming
nearly equal conditions, and looking at the form of the present
coast-line, which is indented by two distinct broad bays, it seems
probable that the old course of the river may have been intercepted
by the sea at two several points, the one nearer Poole and the other
nearer Lymington. Directly this closer communication with the sea was
formed for the Dorsetshire rivers, they would, of course, owing to the
more rapid fall, excavate their valleys with greater speed at their
mouth, and directly they became tidal, the sea would make rapid inroads
on the soft sand and clay exposed to its action. So effective is this
action, that at Hordwell Cliff the waste of the shore is said to be
now going on at the rate of about a yard per annum,[2785] or upwards
of half a mile every thousand years, though perhaps this is somewhat
exaggerated.

In discussing this question, I have purposely avoided complicating the
subject with the effects of any general lowering of the surface of
the ground by erosion either chemical or mechanical; or of upheavals
and depressions of the land during the period of the formation of the
valleys, though no doubt this also has taken place, especially along
the southern coast of Britain. I must, however, mention the existence
of a submerged forest, occasionally visible at low water, at the
foot of the cliffs at Bournemouth, which seems to show that there as
elsewhere a depression of a former land surface has taken place. The
late Mr. Albert Way, F. S. A., who had the opportunity of examining
some of the stumps of trees exposed at rare intervals at low water,
informed me that they appeared to be those of the true Scotch fir;
and also that local tradition speaks of an impassable morass having,
so late as the commencement of the present century, |696| intervened
between the line of cliffs and the sea. On the occasion of one of my
visits to Bournemouth, some of these stumps were fortunately visible,
and were pointed out to me by Mr. Way at a spot but a few yards to the
west of the pier, and between high and low water-mark. They appear
to be of no very remote antiquity, geologically speaking, and to be
connected rather with the present valley of the Bourne than with the
valley of the old river Solent, as the trees, some of which were fully
a hundred years old, grew on the surface of a thick bed of hard peat.
Under any circumstances, however, the presence of such remains at
the foot of the cliff does not tend to diminish our estimate of the
antiquity of the freshwater beds containing the works of man, which we
find occupying their summit.

In passing the deposits containing flint implements in different parts
of this country under review, enough has, I think, now been said to
show that in position, in character, and in the nature of their organic
contents, they are perfectly in accordance with what might have been
expected from river-action under certain circumstances. The case might
indeed have been made much stronger had deposits in other places, in
all respects similar, except that the presence of flint implements has
not as yet been observed in them, been brought into account; and it
must not be forgotten that this might, with perfect propriety, have
been done, as there can be no possible doubt that a certain series
of gravels, sands, and clays, containing organic remains and flint
implements in extremely variable quantity, all belong to one geological
period, and owe their existence to similar causes.

But though on no other hypothesis than that of river-action can
the phenomena be accounted for, yet, as has already been seen, it
is necessary, in order that river-action should have produced such
effects, that the streams, during some portion of the year at all
events, should have been more torrential in character than they are
at the present day. If, however, we see satisfactory grounds for
attributing these beds containing land and freshwater shells and
remains of terrestrial animals, to rivers formerly flowing at much
higher levels than at present, which have since excavated their
valleys—and it seems impossible to do otherwise—then we must also
accept as a fact that the climatal conditions were such as would enable
the rivers to perform the work. It is, as Sir Joseph Prestwich[2786]
has shown, quite out of the question |697| to suppose that with the
valleys excavated to the present depth, any meteorological causes
could fill them to their summits; or even if they could and did, that
they would leave such deposits as we find at high elevations on their
slopes, or even on detached eminences. It will, however, be well to
examine briefly any corroborative evidence that may be forthcoming,
as to the probability either of a severer climate involving a greater
accumulation of winter snows, or of a greater rainfall, or of both. The
one, indeed, seems hardly probable without the other, as a cold land
surface “presented to vapour-laden sea-winds, as in the mountainous
districts of the north-west of Spain, in our own lake districts, and in
Scandinavia,”[2787] involves of necessity a heavy rainfall.

With regard to climate, we may take into account that which prevailed
at a somewhat earlier date; for there appears no doubt that the flint
implement-bearing gravels are all of later date than the Chalky Boulder
Clay of the Eastern Counties, a deposit which belongs to the so-called
Glacial Period, during a portion of which a great part of England and
Scotland was submerged beneath the sea, and became coated with masses
of Boulder Clay and other deposits, derived for the most part from the
moraines of glaciers, sometimes at no great distance, and possibly in
the main transported and dropped in their present positions by means of
icebergs and coast ice. That they are of later date is proved by more
than one of the implement-bearing beds reposing in valleys either in,
or cut through, this Chalky Boulder Clay; and at Hoxne the interval
between the Glacial deposits and the Palæolithic beds is marked by
two sets of lacustrine strata, the lower and earlier with a flora
characteristic of a mild climate, and the upper by one which points
to the recurrence of Arctic conditions. Prof. Boyd Dawkins[2788] has
suggested the probability of the higher ground of North Wales and the
northern part of England having been still enveloped in an ice-mantle
at the time that the mammoth, reindeer, and other post-glacial mammals
were living in the lower and less inclement districts. But this view
is to some extent founded on negative evidence, and on the assumption
that palæolithic implements do not exist in this northern area. I
have already commented[2789] on the possibility of implements being
eventually found in it.

The crumpling and contortion of some of the beds of |698|
River-drift, especially at high levels, has been regarded by Sir
Joseph Prestwich[2790] as possibly resulting from the lateral pressure
produced by packing and jamming together of blocks of ice, such as may
now be witnessed in rivers like the Danube and the Rhine. The “trail
and warp” of Mr. Trimmer, those superficial deposits so common over a
large portion of this country, which, indeed, constitute so large a
portion of the arable soil, seem also, as the Rev. Osmond Fisher[2791]
has pointed out, to be significant of a severer climate than at present
prevails. The “Palæolithic floors,” both near London and at Caddington,
are buried under a considerable thickness of this “trail.” There is
moreover a high probability that, at the time of the deposit of the
gravels, Britain was still united to the continent; so that, apart from
other causes, there was a tendency for the climate to partake more of
a continental character than at present, and to induce greater cold in
winter and greater heat in summer.

That the existence of enormous glaciers is as indicative of the action
of heat, in order to convert the water of the ocean into vapour, as of
cold to condense it, has been insisted on by Professor Tyndall,[2792]
and even more strongly by Professor Frankland. If at the time of the
rivers flowing at the high level, Britain was still connected with the
continent, it is by no means impossible that the temperature of the
seas on either side of the connecting isthmus may have been different.
That connected more immediately with the Southern Ocean would have been
the warmer of the two, from which a copious supply of vapour would be
carried by the southerly winds, and be condensed as rain in its passage
northward.

Mr. Alfred Tylor, F.G.S.,[2793] in his profusely illustrated papers
on the Amiens gravel, and on Quaternary gravels, contends for the
existence of a “Pluvial period” subsequent to the Glacial, in which
the rainfall was far greater than at present, and such a view has much
to commend it for acceptance. But when he proceeds to assert that the
surface of the Chalk in the valley of the Somme, and in all other
valleys of the same character, had assumed its present form prior to
the deposition of any of the gravel or loess now to be seen there, and
to argue that the whole of the gravels at all levels on the slopes are
of one age, and due |699| to floods extending to a height of at least
80 feet above the level of the rivers, we may well hesitate before
we give in our adhesion to such views. In the first place, it is, to
say the least of it, unphilosophical to rely too much on a single
example, such as that of the valley of the Somme; and to account for
its phenomena by causes which are evidently incapable of producing
the effects observable in other localities, as, for instance, at
Southampton, close to the sea, and 160 feet above its level. But what
shall we say to floods raising the levels of rivers upwards of 80 feet,
yet having no erosive power, and the waters of which, regardless of the
laws of gravity, tranquilly deposited their solid contents evenly over
the slopes, or often in the greatest thickness on their higher part,
and in some cases on almost isolated hills, instead of principally
on the bottom of the river-valley? Whence all the materials for the
gravels are to be derived, how they are to be reduced to a subangular
condition by water-wear, especially in the case of the flint implements
occurring in the gravels, are points on which further information will
have to be supplied, before any such views can be seriously entertained.

I have up to this point almost left out of view any distinctive
differences between the deposits at a high level and those at a low
level in the river-valleys. That such, however, exist has been pointed
out by Sir Joseph Prestwich;[2794] and judging from the northern range
of the group of shells found in the high-level beds, the absence of
southern species, the character of the mammalian and vegetable remains,
the transport of large blocks such as could only be effected by ice and
the other physical features of the case, he is inclined to assign a
winter temperature to the period of their deposit from 19° to 29° Fahr.
below that which now obtains in these regions. From a consideration of
the features of the low-level deposits he considers that at the time
of their deposit, the climate was rather less severe, by about 5°. The
presence of the mammoth and woolly-haired rhinoceros, animals specially
adapted for cold climates; of the musk-ox, the reindeer, the lemming,
and marmot, corroborates the same view; while the hippopotamus, which
seems characteristic of the low-level deposits, is suggestive of a
somewhat warmer climate. Like the mammoth and rhinoceros, its structure
may, however, have been somewhat modified, so as to enable it to occupy
colder regions than at present, or it may have been merely a summer
visitor ranging northwards before the |700| separation of Britain from
the continent. Under any circumstances its presence seems to indicate
that the volume of the rivers was probably in excess of what it is at
the present time. But whatever may have been the degree of winter cold,
or the amount of the snow and rainfall, the one was not so extreme
as to prevent there being an abundance of animal life, nor the other
so great as to interfere with the growth of a sufficient supply of
vegetable food on which it might subsist.

It has, indeed, been supposed by some that the remains of the early
mammals occurring in the gravels are derived from older beds, and that
their presence in association with flint implements no more proves
the contemporaneity of the men who made those implements with the old
Quaternary fauna, than their association with Chalk fossils proves
that mankind were originally inhabitants of the bed of the Cretaceous
ocean. Did the gravels only occur at such levels as are within reach of
existing streams, there might be some reason in such a view, which is,
moreover, in certain cases and within certain limits, probably correct.
For we have seen how in the course of the excavation of a valley, the
beds deposited at one time are liable to be disturbed at another, and
re-deposited in a fresh place; which could hardly happen without an
admixture of fresh materials, some probably of a more recent date. In
the process of transport, however, not only the implements but the
still softer bones are liable to wear and abrasion of the angles, and
it is impossible to conceive that, assuming the Quaternary fauna to
have disappeared from this region before the valleys were excavated,
and the implement-bearing beds deposited, their bones could still exist
in such numbers, and so often in an unrolled condition in the low-level
beds.

Had this older fauna disappeared, it is evident that man could not have
subsisted here alone, unaccompanied by other animals to furnish him
with food; and if these animals belonged to the later or “prehistoric”
fauna, where, as Sir John Lubbock pertinently asks, are their bones?
If, however, we acknowledge that the pleistocene mammals still occupied
this country at the time of the low-level beds being formed, and
if we find their remains also in those at a high level, and at all
intermediate heights, it is evident that they must have persisted
here during the whole period of the excavation of the valleys; while,
if we find also flint implements in an unrolled and unworn condition
at all heights, it is evident that those who made them must also
have been |701| co-occupants of the region during the same period.
If, indeed, as appears to be in some valleys the case, the unworn
implements occur only in the high-level deposits, while in the lower
they are either absent or in a much worn condition, the inference is,
that in those particular valleys the occupation by man, though for
some time contemporaneous with that of the mammoth and his congeners,
ceased before the extinction or emigration of the old fauna. In some
cases, however, as at Fisherton,[2795] the worked flints have been
found below the remains of mammoth; while in the beds at Menchecourt,
near Abbeville,[2796] in which the implements occur, were found the
bones of a hind leg of rhinoceros still in their natural position,
so that they must have retained their ligaments when deposited, and
could not since have been disturbed. With regard to the amelioration
of climatal conditions which led to the cessation of the excavation
of the valleys, it may not impossibly have been connected with the
insulation of the country, when the isthmus connecting it with the
continent was cut through by the sea. But this is hardly the place for
such speculations. If, however, we may regard the estuarine deposits at
Selsey, in which almost entire skeletons of mammoth occur, as belonging
to the period when the deposit of the low-level gravels was ceasing,
it would appear from the associated molluscan forms, as interpreted by
Mr. Godwin-Austen, that the temperature of the waters of the English
Channel was at that time such as may now be met with twelve degrees
farther south.

If there was a difference in the climatal conditions of the high and
low-level deposits, it might have produced some effect on the method
of living, and on the implements of the men of the two periods.
At one time I thought it probable that a marked distinction might
eventually be drawn between the high-and low-level implements, but
so far as Britain is concerned, this can hardly be done. Still the
_facies_ of a collection from two different spots is rarely quite the
same, and I think there is generally a preponderance of the ruder
pointed implements in the high-level gravels, and of the flat ovate
sharp-rimmed implements in the low-level. In the valley of the Somme,
the broad polygonal flakes are certainly most abundant in the lower
beds, as at Montiers, near Amiens.

I would, however, deprecate the introduction of such terms as |702|
“Eolithic” and “Mesolithic” in order to distinguish two phases in the
Stone Period as being both unfounded and misleading. We know not where
or when the dawn of human civilization arose, but it was probably
long before the date of our earliest River-Gravels and in some part
of the world more favoured by climate than Britain. Why then should
we speak of British implements as Eolithic? And how can we apply the
term Mesolithic to a period intervening between the Palæolithic and
Neolithic Ages, when we know neither when the one ended nor when the
other began?

Enough has now been said with regard to the manner in which these beds
of River-drift were probably deposited; and the irresistible conclusion
is, that, owing to the wasting agency of rain, frost, and rivers,
there must have been a vast change in the superficial features of the
country, since the time when those who fashioned the flint implements
found in the high-level gravels were joint occupants of the land with
the mammoth and rhinoceros and the other departed members of the
Quaternary fauna. A similar change in the surface of the country has
also taken place in the neighbourhood of the caves in which the remains
of this same fauna occur, associated also with similar relics of human
workmanship.

What length of time it must have taken for such changes to be effected,
is a question we must now approach; but before doing so it will be well
to say a few more words, in addition to what has already been said, on
the almost entire absence of human bones in the beds containing those
of the associated mammalia.

In the first place, it is well to repeat that whatever may be the case
in the brick-earth, or loess, there have not, as has been pointed out
by Sir John Lubbock,[2797] been found in the gravel up to the present
time any remains of animals so small as man, who, as the same author
observes, must of necessity have been few in number in comparison with
the animals by the chase of which he must have subsisted. Another
cause appears also to have been at work; for however barbarous we may
suppose the human race to have been at that remote period, we can
hardly believe them to have been so destitute of all natural affection
as to deny some rites of sepulture to friends or relatives removed by
death. There would, therefore, in all probability, be but few or no
human bones exposed on the surface in such a manner as to be carried
off by the flooded streams, and imbedded in their gravels; while, in
case of any human beings perishing by drowning, their bodies, as I have
|703| already shown, would probably either be carried to sea, or left
in such a position as to allow of their recovery, at all events before
they became disarticulated.

This is, however, a matter of but small importance, as there will be
but little difficulty in conceding that an implement fashioned by
human agency—and on this point there can be no question, unless we are
to assume in ancient times the existence of some other now extinct
race of intelligent beings—is as good an evidence of the existence of
man, as would be any or all of his bones. Moreover, human bones are
reported to have been discovered in these Quaternary beds, both in this
country and in France. In England, I have already mentioned a human
skull found near Bury St. Edmunds by Mr. Trigg, and the more doubtful
skeleton found near Northfleet. I will not, however, insist upon either
discovery being beyond all cavil.

Nor will I do more than allude to the too celebrated Moulin Quignon
jaw, over which I have already pronounced a _Requiescat in pace_,[2798]
but the discovery of portions of the human skeleton by M. Bertrand, and
M. Reboux, in the valley of the Seine, at Clichy[2799] and elsewhere
near Paris, in the same beds in which implements of true Palæolithic
types have been found, seems better substantiated.

Whether the _Pithecanthropus erectus_ of Dr. Dubois was human or
simian, and what is the date of the beds in which his remains were
found, and whether there is evidence of the existence of Miocene or
Pliocene Man[2800] in Burma, Portugal, France, Italy, or California,
are questions which want of space compels me to leave on one side. I
have, however, more than once elsewhere expressed my opinion on the
subject of Tertiary Man.[2801]

I need hardly again repeat that according to my view it is not in
Britain, but in some part of the world more favoured by climate that
the cradle of the human race is to be sought. And yet the antiquity of
Man in Britain seems to extend far beyond any of our ordinary methods
of computation. In attempting to estimate it, however vaguely, I must
at the outset observe that with our present amount of knowledge, it
is hopeless to expect that it can |704| be determined with anything
approaching to precision. Not only have we no trustworthy measure
of the rate of excavation of the valleys, which might give us an
approximate date for the higher deposits in them, but we are at a loss
to know at what epoch their excavation in the lower part of their
course ceased, and what may be termed the modern alluvial deposits,
which to some extent have partially refilled the old channels, began to
accumulate.

That the general configuration of the surface of the country, in
Neolithic times, when the ordinary forms of polished stone implements
were in use, was much the same as it is at present, is proved by the
fact of such implements being frequently found in recent superficial
deposits. Were we, in defiance of probability, to assume that the
use of these polished implements did not date farther back than two
thousand years from the period when we are first made acquainted with
this country by history, this would give an additional four thousand
years beyond the period necessary for the excavation of the valleys
for the date of the older River-drift implements. Such a period as
two thousand years is in all probability almost ridiculously small
to assign for the duration of the Neolithic and Bronze Periods; but
however this may be, there appears, in this country at all events,
to be a complete gap[2802] between the River-drift and Surface
Stone Periods, so far as any intermediate forms of implements are
concerned; and here at least the race of men who fabricated the latest
of the palæolithic implements may have, and in all probability had,
disappeared at an epoch remote from that when the country was again
occupied by those who not only chipped out but polished their flint
tools, and who were, moreover, associated with a mammalian fauna far
nearer resembling that of the present day than that of Quaternary times.

So different, indeed, are the two groups of animals that, as has
already been observed, Prof. Boyd Dawkins[2803] has shown that out
of forty-eight well-ascertained species living in the Post-glacial
or River-drift Period, only thirty-one were able to live on into the
Prehistoric or Surface Stone Period. Such a change as this in the fauna
of a country can hardly have been the work of a few years, or even of a
few centuries; and yet we must intercalate a period of time sufficient
for its accomplishment between the remotest date |705| to which we
can carry back the Neolithic Period, and the close of the Palæolithic
Period as indicated by the low-level gravels. The antiquity, then, that
must be assigned to the implements in the highest beds of River-drift
may be represented (1) by the period requisite for the excavation of
the valleys to their present depth; plus (2), the period necessary
for the dying out and immigration of a large part of the Quaternary
or Post-Glacial fauna and the coming in of the Prehistoric; plus (3),
the Polished Stone Period; plus (4), the Bronze, Iron, and Historic
Periods, which three latter in this country occupy a space of probably
not less than three thousand years.

A single equation, involving so many unknown quantities, is, as already
observed, not susceptible of solution; but various attempts have
been made to arrive at some approximate idea of the amount of time
it represents. One method has been that of assigning a date for the
Glacial Period, deduced from astronomical causes, mainly in connection
with the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, as pointed out by M.
Adhémar and Mr. Croll. From data thus obtained, Sir Charles Lyell[2804]
inclines to place it at a period of extreme cold about 800,000 years
ago, though Sir John Lubbock[2805] would rather accept an epoch of
somewhat less severity about 200,000 years removed from our time.

Another and more direct method suggested by Sir Archibald Geikie,[2806]
following in Mr. A. Tylor’s track, is that of estimating the time
required for the excavation of the valleys by the amount of solid
matter carried down in suspension by various rivers at the present
day. He estimates that this amount, if spread over the whole area
drained by the rivers, represents, on an average, an annual loss of
about 1∕6000 of a foot; but inasmuch as the erosion of the slopes and
watercourses is very much greater than that of the more level grounds,
the excavation of the valleys must proceed at a more rapid rate, which
he assumes to be about 1∕1200 part of a foot per annum, or one foot
in 1,200 years. Such a calculation is, of course, open to various
objections, as we may readily conceive the bottom and slopes of a
valley to have been so far washed that, under ordinary circumstances,
they afford little or no fine earthy matter to be taken up by the rain
falling on their surface; and in such a case, the rivers, if turbid,
would derive their turbidity from the water delivered from the higher
and comparatively |706| unwashed table lands. Or again, the soil may,
like the Chalk under ordinary circumstances, be so absorbent that but
little of the rainfall flows off from its surface. The calculation has
already been made, that a rainfall of 54 inches annually, supposing
the whole of it flowed off the land into the sea in a turbid state,
containing, like the Mississippi, 1∕1500 part of its weight of solid
matter, would lower the surface a foot in 450 years; but as has already
been observed, we cannot conceive it possible that with such soils
as we have here to do with, the constant turbidity should have been
anything like so great. And, in fact, the whole system of calculation
is one which may be regarded rather as proving the necessity of valleys
being in course of time formed by subaërial action, than as giving any
definite guide by which to calculate the period requisite for their
formation. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the denuding power of
the falling rain is greater on the slopes than on the level surfaces;
but it seems impossible to assign any proportions to the effects on
land lying at different inclinations, of different characters, and
under different circumstances as to any vegetable covering. Were the
action uniform over the whole surface exposed, of course no alteration
beyond a general lowering of the land-surface would result from this
cause, and the valleys would remain of precisely the same depth with
regard to the adjacent land as they did at remote epochs. Looking at
the quantity of brick-earth still left on the slopes of many of our
valleys, I am inclined to think that the lowering of the surface has
been more general than has been supposed by Sir Archibald Geikie. The
presence of these soft and easily denuded beds is also an argument
against the excavation of the valleys having progressed in a uniform
manner, by heavy rains falling during the period of the year when
such beds were soft and unfrozen; and seems rather significant of the
excavation of the valley by floods principally occurring at a time when
the upper part of the soil was in a frozen condition.

Certainly the whole character of the deposits is more in accordance
with their resulting from the occasional flooding of the streams
than from any other cause. If this be so, who shall tell at what
intervals such floods occurred, and what was the average effect of
each in deepening the valleys? That they were of comparatively rare
occurrence, and not so frequent that they were foreseen by the men of
those days, seems deducible from the number of their implements found
in the gravels. For there is much probability that these must have been
washed in from |707| settlements on the banks of the rivers, which,
notwithstanding previous catastrophes of the same kind, were constantly
placed within reach of the stream when flooded.

Sir Joseph Prestwich[2807] has suggested as a possible gauge of the
antiquity of the deposits, the natural funnels eaten into the chalk
by the action of water charged with carbonic acid, and has cited one
at Drucat, near Abbeville, which has been formed since the deposit of
the gravel containing flint implements, and is upwards of 20 feet in
diameter at top, and probably 100 feet in depth; but here also it seems
impossible to introduce a factor by which the time represented can be
ascertained. There are, however, features in connection with this case
which can only be reconciled with the former high level of the bottom
of the adjacent valley, and with its gradual excavation. It will be
remembered that similar pipes of erosion, leading in some cases to
caverns above them, occur in the Drift-beds of the valley of the Little
Ouse.

There is yet another means at our command for forming, at all events,
an approximate idea of the time that has elapsed since the deposit of
the beds containing the remains of the old Quaternary fauna, inasmuch
as at the time of their introduction into this country, if not for
a lengthened period afterwards, Britain had apparently not become
an island, but was still connected by an isthmus of greater or less
width with the Continent. To estimate the time, however, that would be
required for cutting through this isthmus and widening the Channel to
its present dimensions, is a work from which the mind almost recoils.
Even the wearing away of that tract of land to the south of the
present Hampshire coast, which must almost of necessity have existed
at the time when the Bournemouth flint implement-bearing gravels were
deposited, taking the present rapid inroad of the sea on the unusually
soft cliffs at Hordwell as a guide, would seem to involve a period
of not less than 10,000 years; but inasmuch as the cliffs during a
considerable portion of the time must have been of chalk instead of
sand and clay, and as a chalk cliff 500 feet high, instead of being
worn away at the rate of a yard each year, is said only to recede at
the rate of an inch in a century,[2808] the actual period necessary
for the removal of this tract must probably have been many |708|
times 10,000 years, and can with certainty be regarded as having been
immensely in excess of such a lapse of time.

On the whole, it would seem that for the present, at least, we must
judge of the antiquity of these deposits rather from the general effect
produced upon our minds by the vastness of the changes which have
taken place, both in the external configuration of the country and its
extent seaward, since the time of their formation, than by any actual
admeasurement of years or of centuries. To realize the full meaning of
these changes, almost transcends the powers of the imagination. Who,
for instance, standing on the edge of the lofty cliff at Bournemouth,
and gazing over the wide expanse of waters between the present shore
and a line connecting the Needles on the one hand, and the Ballard Down
Foreland on the other, can fully comprehend how immensely remote was
the epoch, when what is now that vast bay was high and dry land, and a
long range of chalk downs, 600 feet above the sea, bounded the horizon
on the south? And yet this must have been the sight that met the eyes
of those primeval men who frequented the banks of that ancient river
which buried their handiworks in gravels that now cap the cliffs, and
of the course of which so strange but indubitable a memorial subsists
in what has now become the Solent Sea.

Or again, taking our stand at Ealing, or Acton, or Highbury, and
looking over a broad valley fully four miles in width, with the river
flowing through it at a depth of 100 feet below its former bed, in
which, beneath our feet, are relics of human art deposited at the same
time as the gravels; which of us can picture to himself the lapse
of time represented by the excavation of a valley on such a scale,
by a river larger, it may be, in volume than the Thames, but still
draining only the same tract of country? But when, to this long period
we mentally add that during which the old fauna, with the mammoth
and rhinoceros, and other to us strange and unaccustomed forms, was
becoming extinct, so far as Britain was concerned; and also that other,
we know not how lengthened period, when our barbarous predecessors
sometimes polished their stone implements, but were still unacquainted
with metallic tools; and then beyond this, add the many centuries when
bronze was in use for cutting purposes; and after all this, further
remember that the ancient and mighty |709| city now extending across
the valley does not, with all its historical associations, carry us
back to the times even of the bronze-using people, the mind is almost
lost in amazement at the vista displayed.

So fully must this be felt, that we are half inclined to sympathize
with those who, from sheer inability to carry their vision so far back
into the dim past, and from unconsciousness of the cogency of other and
distinct evidence as to the remoteness of the origin of the human race,
are unwilling to believe in so vast an antiquity for man as must of
necessity be conceded by those, who however feebly they may make their
thoughts known to others, have fully and fairly weighed the facts which
modern discoveries have unrolled before their eyes.

FINIS.

|710|

DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.

PLATE I.

1. Simple ridged flake. _Porte Marcadé, Abbeville._

2. Sharp-pointed flake, with several facets on its convex side.
_Montiers, near Amiens._

3. Chisel-pointed flake. _Ibid._

4. Large polygonal flake. _Ibid._

5. Round-pointed, tongue-shaped, sub-triangular implement. _Biddenham,
near Bedford._

6. Acutely pointed, kite-shaped ditto. _St. Acheul, near Amiens._

7. Sub-triangular ditto, with truncated butt. _Ibid._

8. Ditto, with incurved sides, and butt formed of the natural surface
of the flint. _Ibid._

9. Ditto, made from a round-ended nodule of flint. _Ibid._

10. Thick-backed, single-edged implement of wedge-shaped section.
_Ibid._

PLATE II.

11. Ovate tongue-shaped implement. _St. Acheul, near Amiens._

12. Ovate-lanceolate ditto, with rough butt. _Ibid._

13. Ditto, with truncated butt. (_Brick-earth_), _St. Acheul, Amiens_.

14. Rough, wedge-shaped implement. _St. Acheul, Amiens._

15. Round-pointed implement with untrimmed butt. _Ibid._

16. Ditto, with naturally rounded butt and side. _Ibid._

17. Thin, ovate, tongue-shaped implement. _Champ de Mars, Abbeville._

18. Ovate implement of intermediate form between the tongue-shaped and
sharp-rimmed. _St. Acheul, Amiens._

19. Ovate, thin, sharp-rimmed implement. _Menchecourt, Abbeville._

20. Irregularly ovate ditto. _Moulin Quignon, Abbeville._

[Illustration: _Plate I._ IMPLEMENTS FROM THE RIVER-DRIFT.

_Scale six inches to the foot or half linear measure._]

[Illustration: _Plate II._ IMPLEMENTS FROM THE RIVER-DRIFT.

_Scale six inches to the foot or half linear measure._]

|711|

GENERAL INDEX.

 A

 Abbeville, hand-mill at, 258

 Abbott, Mr. J. W. Lewis, on minute flint tools, 325

 Aberdeenshire, flint workshops in, 22

 Abnormal peculiarities in celts, 130

 Abrasion of flints by fire-producing, 315, 318, 416, &c.;
   by hammering, 217, 413, &c.

 Abydos, Egyptian arrow-heads from, 393, 395

 Achilles, spear of, 4

 Adams, Dr. Leith, Guernsey arrow-head factory traced by, 401

 Adder-stones, 437

 Adhémar, M., as to date of Glacial Period, 705

 Admixture of objects of different periods, 210, 475, 479, 487, 492

 Adzes,
   in Burma and Assam, 59;
   of Clalam Indians, 165;
   of New Guinea, 162;
   Polynesian, of basalt, 69;
   bronze, 4;
   with carved handle, 166, 167;
   celts adapted for use as, 94, 122, 124, 135;
   of chalcedonic flint, 138;
   hafting of, 164, 165;
   for hollowing canoes, 165, 166;
   of horn, carved, 435;
   of mussel-shell, 182;
   perforated, 188–192;
   uses of,215

 Ælfric’s Glossary on _Stan-æx_, 145

 Æneid, mention of bronze arms in, 4

 Africa, sacrificial use of stone in, 10;
   flint flakes in diamond diggings of, 277

 Agate,
   arrow-heads of, 406;
   chisel of, 40;
   gun-flints of, 21

 Agatharchides on Egyptian chisels, 6

 Ages, Stone, Bronze, and Iron, succession of, 2

 Agricola, Georgius, on _Brontia_ and _Ceraunia_, 64

 Agriculture, possible use of stone implements in, 71, 205, 645

 Ahts of North America,
   fern-roots eaten by, 250;
   mussel-shell adzes used by, 182

 _Aithadh_, or elf-shot, 365

 Akerman, Mr., on Lapp burials of needed objects, 283

 Alaska, stone hammer from, 25

 Albania, gun-flint making in, 21

 Albite, chloritic, celts of, 109

 Aldrovandus,
   his _culter lapideus_, 289;
   on the _Glossopetra_, 363;
   on Roman stone weapons, 362;
   his _securis lapidea_, 157;
   on stone implements, 63, 64

 Aleppo, threshing instrument from, 284

 Aleutian Islanders, thong-drill used by, 48

 Alexius Comnenus, celt presented by, to German Emperor, 59

 Alger, Mr., on level of Waveney Valley, 683

 Algeria, flakes from, 287

 Algonquins, form of club used by, 424

 _Allée couverte_ of Argenteuil,
   perforated pebbles from, 465;
   stag’s horn socket from, 160;
   worked blade from, 327

 Alluvium, beds of, between stalagmitic layers in caverns, 479

 Almond-shaped implements, 647

 Alteration in structure of flint, 487, 497, 513, 556, 596, 659, 660

 Alum, its wood-preserving power, 152

 “Amazon axe,” 184

 Amber,
   beads of, in interment, 429;
   cup of, at Hove, 449;
   with perforated axe, 185;
   with whetstone, 268;
   importation of, to Britain, 449;
   piece of, in interment, 149;
   plates of, for necklaces, 460;
   studs or buttons of, 456

 America, doubtful evidence of palæolithic remains in, 654

 Ammonites
   in barrow, 467;
   their use as “cramp-stones,” 470

 Amulets,
   arrow-heads mounted as, 365, 367;
   celt probably used as, 145;
   of iron-ore in interment, 313;
   Portuguese decorated, 470;
   of schist, 463;
   stones in interment as, 466, 468, 469

 _Anchorites_, Dr. Grew’s description of, 364

 “Ancient Meols,” Hume’s, referred to, 439

 Anderson, Dr. J.,
   experiments with flint implements, 320, 408;
   on polished stone discs, 440

 Andrée, Richard, on beliefs concerning stone weapons, 60

 Angelucci, Capt., stone arrow-head factory discovered by, 402

 Anglesea, querns in, 259

 Anglo-Saxon burial ground, flint and steel in, 283

 Animals,
   carvings of, on weapons, 215, 435;
   engravings of, on Egyptian gold haft, 359;
   extinct, their co-existence with man, 513, 524, &c.

 Antiquity
   of celts, 143, 150;
   of man in Britain, 704;
   of river-drift implements, 700

 Antlers of deer,
   celt-sockets made from, 160;
   circle of, in barrow, 466;
   used as picks at Cissbury, 79;
   flat instrument of, 432;
   at Grime’s Graves, 33

 Anvils, stone,
   early use of, 245;
   recent use of, 11, 232

 Apaches of Mexico,
   arrow-head making among, 24;
   hammer-hafting, 239

 Arabs, arrow-head charms among, 367

 Archer, Mr. F., neolithic flakes fitted on to core by, 20

 Arctic fauna,
   of Crayford beds, 607;
   northward retreat of, 486;
   of Salisbury beds, 689;
   plants, fossil, at Hoxne, 577

 Ariantes, his method of numbering the people, 368

 Armlet on arm of skeleton, 429;
   bronze, in cromlech, 464;
   “coal-money” the central disc of, 465;
   of jet, lathe-turned, 464

 Arrow-flakers, 37, 416

 Arrow-flaking,
   art of, in America, 42;
   experiments on, by author, 41;
   use of fossil ivory for, 37

 Arrows and arrow-heads,
   African and Asiatic, 405;
   American, 406, 407;
   Arab, 367;
   of the Bushmen, 370;
   Californian, 39, 40;
   Danish, 35, 306;
   Egyptian, 368, 369, 395;
   Eskimo, 25, 37;
   French, 395, 400–402;
   Gelderland, 403;
   German, 403;
   Greek, 368;
   Indian, 405;
   Irish, 365, 370, 399, 400;
   Italian, 359, 402;
   Japanese, 405;
   from Lake-dwellings, 402;
   Lycian, 410;
   Mexican, 39;
   Patagonian, 400;
   Persian, 394, 396;
   Peruvian, 407;
   Russian, 404;
   Scottish, 386;
   Scandinavian, 353, 404;
   Spanish, 403;
   Swiss, 409;
   Virginian, 37;
   barbed, 380–390;
   bone, 210, 361;
   bronze, scarce in England, 368;
   chisel-ended, 409;
   crescent-shaped, 396;
   detachable from shaft, 370;
   double-pointed, 386;
   featherless, 410;
   iron-tipped, 394, 396;
   leaf-shaped, 373–378, 484;
   lozenge-shaped, 378, 484;
   manufactories of, 268, 280, 359, 401, 402;
   methods of shafting, 408, 410;
   modern use of, for fire-producing, 397;
   in necklaces, 10, 300;
   notched, 372, 396, 406;
   poisoned, 361, 370;
   single-barbed, 385, 393, 306;
   stemmed, 370;
   successive developments of, 369;
   superstitions concerning, 362–367;
   triangular, 390;
   in human vertebræ, 375, 396, 400

 Arrow-shafts,
   concave scrapers for fashioning, 320;
   grooved pebbles for straightening, 268;
   Irish, 408;
   South American, 407

 Art, works of, in caves, 484, 523, 657

 Arundelian marbles as to date of discovery of iron, 4

 “Asbestos,” ligniformed, whetstone of, 352

 Ash,
   Irish arrow-shaft of, 408;
   in brick earth at Hoxne, 537

 Ashes of bone in hyæna den, 518

 Asia, beliefs in, concerning celts, 59

 Asphalte, use of, in mounting Swiss celts, 163

 Assagais, Kaffir mode of shafting, 410

 Assiut, figures from tomb at, 369

 _Astropelekia_, 59

 Atkins, Mr. E. Martin, abraded pyrites found by, 318

 Atkinson, Rev. J. C, barrows examined by, 211

 Attrition of teeth by gritty food, 253

 Atys, stone knife used by, 9

 Augustus, bronze arms as antiquities in time of, 4

 Australians,
   celts handled by, with gum, 137, 170, 171;
   flint an article of barter among, 80;
   flints mounted by, as saws, 277, 293;
   grinding nardoo-seeds, 243;
   hatchet-hafting among, 233;
   pounding-stones of, 243, 245;
   tomahawks, mode of mounting by, 166;
   tools of, 97

 Authenticity of palæolithic implements, 658, 659

 Awls,
   bone, from Kent’s Cavern, 506;
   bone instruments used as, 432;
   bronze, in interments, 84, 186;
   bronze, with wooden shaft, 462;
   flint, 321–325;
   perforated, 323;
   use of, in sewing leather, 433

 Axes, 32, 63, 149;
   hafting of, 155–163, 168, 160;
   used in the hand, 151;
   of Montezuma II., 157;
   hieroglyph of Nouter, 62

 Axes,
   perforated, Brazilian, 157;
   in Brittany, 212;
   Danish, 32, 186, 205;
   French, 186;
   German, 145, 186, 191;
   Greek, 205;
   Kjökken-mödding, 69;
   Lake-dwellings, 158;
   Mexican, 191;
   Scandinavian, 187, 215;
   of basalt, 186;
   boring of, 46–52;
   with carved handles, 167;
   classification of, 184;
   contemporaneous with bronze, 193, &c.;
   cutting at one end, 192, &c.;
   double-edged, 184–192;
   fluted, 203, 211;
   grooved, 168, 169;
   hafting of, 151–171;
   hollowed on sides, 209;
   in interments, 83, 163, &c.;
   large and heavy, 198, 199;
   little used by modern savages, 215;
   lozenge-shaped, 213;
   ornamented, 196, 209, 211;
   pointed at one end, 188;
   single-edged, 184, 192–196;
   superstitions concerning, 62, 63, 65, 145, 146;
   of ulna of whale, 435

 Axe-hammers, 168, 200–205

 Aymara Indians, hatchet-hafting among, 169, 239

 Ayre, Col., R.A., 78

 Aztecs,
   their method of stone working, 23;
   their stone mortars, 257

 B

 Babington, Prof. C. C., on flint hammer from Burwell, 538

 _Bætuli_, virtues of, 65

 Bahia, stone club from, 251

 Baines, Mr., on Australian stone-working, 26

 Balanus, presence of, in Stour Valley, 621

 Ball of Towie, 421

 Balls, stone,
   carved, 422;
   in lead mines, 234;
   perforated Peruvian, 232;
   possibly used in games, 244;
   their use among Eskimos, 219;
   in grinding corn, 253;
   as hammers, 249;
   with channelled surface, 420–423

 Ballast for railways, implements found in, 573, 578, 632, 633, 639

 Barbers, Mexican, their obsidian razors, 290

 Barbs of arrows, various forms of, 380, &c.

 Bark, Australian hammers hafted with, 167, 168

 Barlow, Mr. F. Pratt, pointed drift implement found by, 619

 Barnwell, Rev. E. L., on Welsh hammer-head, 226

 Barrows,
   bronze and flint found together in, 397, &c.;
   chambered, bone chisel in, 433;
   cups of shale in, 445;
   fossils in, 466, 467, 469;
   gold cup in, with bronze dagger, 449;
   jet ornaments in, 265, 454, &c.;
   long, leaf-shaped arrow-heads in, 377;
   necklaces in, 456–463;
   pebbles in, 443;
   pyrites and flint in, 265, 467;
   spindle whorl of clay in, 439;
   stag’s horn hammer in, 434

 Barry, Mr. F. Tress, 227

 Barter,
   flint an Australian article of, 80;
   flints at Cissbury probably formed for, 80;
   finely worked daggers procured by, 414

 Bartlett’s “History of Manceter” referred to, 187

 Basalt,
   axe hammer of, in interment, 467;
   heads of, 186, 194, 197, 202, 208, 211, 214;
   celts of, 106, 114, 140;
   hammers of, 25, 223;
   hatchets, 34, 85, 170;
   late use of, for anvils, 232;
   maul of, 234

 Basaltic rock, African flakes of, 288

 Bastard gouges, 180–182

 Bast-fibre, its use in arrow shafting, 409;
   used in weaving, 436

 Bate, Mr. Spence, 266, 279

 Bateman, Mr., on pebbles in interments, 467

 “Bâtons de commandement,” in La Madeleine caves, 484

 Bats, stone, possibly used for preparing hemp, 257

 “Batting-staff,” 256

 Battle axes, 195, 197, 207;
   with amber cup in coffin, 449

 “Battling-stones,” 257

 Baudot, M., on flakes in interments, 283

 Bauerman, Mr., on stone hammers in Egyptian mine, 581

 Baye, Baron Joseph de, 160

 Beads,
   amber, 457, 459, 460;
   animal fibre used for stringing, 459;
   like arrow-heads, 367;
   bone, 432, 456, 457;
   with spiral pattern, 211;
   glass, 437, 456;
   jet, 83, 394, 457–462;
   Kimmeridge clay, 309, 457;
   of peculiar shapes, 463;
   quartz, 465;
   shale, 463;
   various, 457–463

 Bear,
   chipped tooth of, 503;
   bones of, in position at Brixham, 513

 Beauty, materials chosen on account of, 224, 227, 406, 466

 Beckmann quoted as to date of flint-locks, 17

 Bed-stone and rolling pin, 250

 Bees-wax and mastic, axes mounted with, 170

 |713|

 Beetles, elytra of, in brick-earth, 536

 Beger, “_celtes_” first named by, 55

 Belcher, Sir Edward,
   on Eskimo arrow-flaking, 37, 39;
   “flensing-knife,” 292;
   stone working, 25;
   stone planes, 299

 Bell, Mr. A. M., discoveries of implements by, 593, 610

 _Bellilah_, Australian mode of pounding, 245

 Belt, the late Mr. Thomas, on Hoxne deposits, 576

 ⲂⲈⲚⲒⲠⲈ, interpretation of, 5

 Bennett, Mr. F. G., implements found by, 536, 627

 Bernays, Mr. E. A., palæolithic implement found by, 611

 Bicarbonate of lime, proportion of, in chalk-streams, 675

 “Bill,” meaning of, 146

 _Bipennis_, 146

 Birds, remains of, in Fisherton beds, 631

 Bison, caves of the age of the, 481

 Bitumen,
   use of, in Swiss Lake-dwellings, 170, 292, 409;
   Egyptian arrows secured to shaft by, 369

 “Black balls,” present use of, in ballots, 468

 “Black-boy gum,” flints mounted in, 277

 Blackmore, Dr. Humphrey P., drift implements found by, 627, 628, 635

 Blacksmiths, modern, their mode of hafting chisels, 168, 233

 Blades of flint,
   crescent-shaped, 355;
   Egyptian, 354;
   from Kent’s Cavern, 496

 Blanford, Mr. W. T., Indian drift implements found by, 651

 Blunting of battle-axes, 196, 207

 Boars’ teeth in interments, 83, 148, 328, 427

 Bodkin of wood in urn, 433

 Bodmann, flint manufactory at, 22

 Bohemian stone axes, 51

 _Bolas_, present mode of using, 422

 “Bolthead, the flat,” 364

 Bonardo on flint arrow-heads, 364

 Bone,
   arrow-heads of, 21, 361, 402;
   awl, 523;
   beads, 211, 432, 456;
   blade of, flint flakes inserted in, 277, 294;
   chisels, 177;
   harpoons of, 277, 394;
   instruments in interments, 313, 314, 431, &c.;
   needles, 321, 433, 523;
   objects of, in caves, 484, 488, 492, 523, &c.;
   late Roman, 144;
   pins, 34, 40, 83, 186, 431, 432;
   plate of, perforated, 428;
   rounded piece of, 34;
   single-barbed arrow-head of, 409;
   tools of, Eskimo, 410;
   tube, 268;
   used in arrow-chipping, 39, &c.;
   wedge for working obsidian, 24

 Bones,
   crushing of, probably for marrow, 25, 239, 504, 657;
   gnawed, 486, 508;
   human, with those of extinct animals, 481, &c.;
   mineral condition of, in caves, 508

 Borers or awls, 321–325

 Boring of stone,
   methods of, 47, 48, 52;
   incomplete, of stone implements, 205, 206, 226

 _Bos primigenius_,
   celt imbedded in skull of, 91, 92;
   _longifrons_ not found in Britain before neolithic times, 486

 Botocudo Indians,
   their method of hafting, 156;
   their use of stone blades, 171

 Boulder, cup formed from, 450

 Boulder Clay,
   anterior to implementiferous deposits, 577, 685, 697;
   East Anglian, 683

 Boulders, American use of, 235;
   used as hammers, 233, 234

 Bourgeois, Abbé, on human works in Pliocene times, 658

 “Bournes,” causes of intermittence of, 664

 Bow, use of, not general among savages, 360

 Bows and arrows,
   Egyptian carved figures armed with, 369;
   myth concerning, 361

 Bowen, Mr., as to African “thunderbolts,” 60

 Box, stone, containing red pigment, 264

 Bracelets (see Armlets)

 Bracers, 425–435, 456

 Bracken, use of, as food, 250

 Brandon, manufacture of gun-flints at, 14, 17

 Brazilian stone axe, 157

 Breach through the chalk range near Bournemouth, 695

 Breccia,
   formation of, in caves, 479;
   implements from, in Kent’s Cavern, 495;
   mace-head made of, 232

 Brent, Mr. John, implements found by, at Reculver, 613–620

 Briar-wood shaft, arrow-head found with, 408

 Brick-earth,
   implements from, 530, 536, 542, 548;
   old land surface underlying, 598

 Bright spots on drift implements, 565, 659

 _Briquets_
   with flints in graves, 283, 397;
   bruising of flints by the use of, 315

 Brittany,
   superstitions regarding celts in, 57;
   early incised drawings of celts in, 62

 Brixham Cave,
   discovery of, 490;
   fauna of, 513;
   implements of, 513–516;
   section of, 512

 Broch of Lingrow, 416, 440

 Brochs,
   cups in, 414, 440;
   querns in, 259;
   stone and bronze in, 440;
   whetstones in, 269

 Bronze Period
   in Egypt, 6;
   in Greece and Italy, 4, 5;
   probable duration of, 704

 Bronze,
   armlets of, 459;
   arms, mention of by Homer, 4;
   arrow-heads, 368;
   awls, 84;
   bucket, 451;
   celts, 213, 268, 453;
   celts mounted in stag’s horn, 428;
   chisels, 6;
   dagger with ox-horn hilt, 265;
   daggers, 185, 193, 194, 208, 227, 398, 427, &c.;
   ear-rings, 207;
   Egyptian hatchets, 169;
   finger-ring, 398;
   “hammer-stone,” 246;
   implement found at Ploucour, 340;
   knife in interment, 195;
   knife, socketed, in Kent’s Cavern, 492;
   mining instruments, 6, 233;
   moulds for celts, 269;
   needle, central-eyed, 433;
   palstaves, 163;
   pins, 267, 269;
   tube, 49;
   tweezers, 433;
   use of, in Britain, 147;
   use of, contemporaneous with that of stone, 84, 143, 211, 331, &c.

 Brooch
   of metal in interment, 214;
   possible use of ring as, 466

 Brooke, Mr. J. W., his implements from Fordingbridge, 633

 Brown, Mr. J. Allen,
   on minute flint tools, 325;
   researches at Ealing, &c., 591;
   Mr. James, drift implements found by, 622, 625, &c.

 Browne, Sir Thomas, on slickstones, 441

 Brun, M. V., his explorations at Bruniquel, 296

 Brunswick, first use of flint-locks by soldiers of, 17

 Buckland, the late Mr. Frank, 291

 Buckman, Prof. J., manufactory of celts recorded by, 35

 Buschan, Dr. G., on prehistoric spinning, 437

 Buick, Dr., on Irish arrow-heads, 365, 370

 “Bulb of percussion,” 274

 Bunyard, Mr. G., drift implements found by, 618

 Burma and Assam, stone adzes in, 59

 Burnishers of stone, 103, 139, 442

 Burton, Dr. J. Hill, on elf-bolts, 366

 Bushmen,
   arrows shafted by, with ostrich-bones, 410;
   ostrich-egg-shell fragments perforated by, 277;
   poisoned arrows of, 370

 Bustards, flint arrow-heads abraded by gizzards of, 396

 Butt end of celt,
   definition of, 66;
   roughened for insertion into socket, 128

 Buttons,
   early use of, 452;
   of jet in interments, 453, 455, &c.;
   possible use of perforated discs as, 439

 C

 Cæsar, Julius, Gaulish use of iron in time of, 10

 “Caillouteur,” daily production of gun-flints by, 21

 Cairns, stones thrown on, 282

 Calc-spar, sling-stones of, 418

 Calcareous nodule,
   celt formed from, 115;
   incrustations on palæolithic implements, 659, 660

 Caledonians, their early use of iron, 11

 Calendering effected by slick-stones, 441

 _Calendrine_, in Cotgrave’s Dictionary, 441

 Californians,
   arrow-head making among the, 423;
   grooved stones of the, 268;
   knife, 273

 Calmucks, use of military flail among the, 423

 Calvert, Mr. F., implements found by, near the Dardanelles, 652

 Cambodia, superstitions as to celts in, 60

 Camenz, bronze tube found at, 49

 Cane, possible use of, in stone-drilling, 50

 Canoes,
   adze for hollowing, 165, 166;
   celts found with, 129, 150;
   gouges for hollowing, 178;
   hollowed by horn chisels, 434

 Cantabria, imperial omen in, 65

 Carbonic acid, its solvent power on chalk, 477, 675, &c.

 Caribbean character of certain implements, 129, 130, 168, 169

 Caribs,
   axe-hafting among, 155, 218;
   their shell gouges, 182

 Carreg-y-Saelhau, or stone of the arrows, 262

 Cartailhac, M., his sections of San Isidro valley, 529

 Carved representation of celt in dolmen, 153

 Carvings in caves, 484, 523

 Cassava bread, stone slabs for cooking, 440

 Catlin, Mr., on American flaking-tools, 24

 Cattle,
   elf-arrows the cause of disease among, 365, 366;
   protection of, by witch-stone, 470;
   snake-bitten, how to treat, 437

 Cave-bear, age of the, 481

 Cave-deposits, rarity of large implements in, 641

 Cave-dwellers, their mode of living, 657

 “Cave-earth,” 479, 492

 Cave-implements, 473, &c.

 Cave-remains prior to Neolithic times, 482

 Caves,
   alternate tenancy of, by man and beasts, 479;
   chronological sequence of contents of, 475, 481–485;
   deposits of, compared with river gravels, 474;
   early use of for habitations, 126;
   formation of, 477, 480;
   ossiferous, 474, 476;
   sepulchral, 126;
   stalagmite of, 479

   Belgian, 286, 475, 478

   Brixham, 512–516

   Creswell Crags, 522–524

   French, arrow-heads in, 396;
     bone and horn objects in, 177, 321;
     character of implements of, 53;
     flint flakes in, 292;
     hammer-stones, 248;
     quartzite flakes, 281, 292;
     serrated flakes, 296

   Gibraltar, bone objects in, 177, 433;
     long flake in, 287;
     saddle-quern in, 252;
     sandstone plate in, 428;
     stone chisel-gouge in, 182

   Happaway, 517

   Kent’s Cavern, 488–511

   Long Hole, Gower, and other Welsh Caves, 521

   of Palestine, early sepulture in, 9

   Tor Bryan, 516

   Wookey hyæna-den, 517–520

 Cavities in gravel, how formed, 556, 557, 561

 _Celte_, occurrence of, in Vulgate, 55

 Celts,
   suggested etymology of, 55;
   superstitions concerning, 56–65;
   classification of, 66

   chipped or rough hewn, 67–86;
   chisel-edged, with curvature of face, 67, 68, 73;
   with equal faces, 75;
   long and narrow, 81;
   tanged, 83;
   wedge-shaped, 82;
   small, made from fragments of larger, 87, 97;
   of stones other than flint, 84

   ground at the edge, 90–97

   polished, with abnormal peculiarities, 130;
   accompanying interments, _passim_;
   approximate date of, 147;
   broken, conversion of, into other implements, 242, 248, 339;
   bronze, from barrows, 213, 268, 309;
   chisel-like, 103, 120, 121;
   classification of, 98;
   with cutting-edge blunted, 138;
   with flattened sides, 110–119;
   found in canoe, 150;
   grooved or notched, 136;
   mode of hafting, 151;
   oblique-edged, 113, 124;
   oval in section, 122, 129;
   perforated, 142;
   range of, in time, 147, 150;
   recent use of, by Irish weavers, 440;
   rectangular in section, 119–122;
   sharpened at both ends, 118;
   stag’s-horn sockets for, 163;
   for use in hand, 133, 136, 171;
   various uses of, 171, 172

 Cembro pine, Siberian stones for crushing nuts of, 245

 Cements
   used in hafting implements, 170, 171;
   bituminous, in Swiss hafting, 292, 409

 Cemetery, Frankish, of Samson, 397

 _Cerauniæ_,
   old German authors concerning, 63;
   Sotacus on the, 64, 480;
   Pliny concerning, 65

 Cereals, absence of, among cave-dwellers, 657

 Ceremonial stone-adze, 167

 Chafing-dish of stone, 445

 Chalcedonic flint,
   celts of, 92, 138;
   Egyptian blades of, 359;
   serrated arrow-head of, 385

 Chalcedony,
   American lance-head of, 337;
   Chilian arrow-heads of, 406;
   gun-flints of, 21;
   harpoon-points of, in Greenland, 405;
   implements of, their French provenance, 80;
   Mexican dagger-blade of, 354;
   ornamental hammer of, 226;
   small Indian cores of, 23

 Chaldæans, their reverence for the hatchet, 62

 Chalk,
   absorbent nature of, 663;
   carved cylinders of, 421;
   cups of, 34;
   cup-shaped vessels of, 450;
   districts, implementiferous gravels in, 663;
   mining in, for flints, 33, 79, 172;
   solution of, by carbonic-acid-charged water, 477, 557, 675;
   “subterranean reservoir” in, 664

 Chamacocos, socketed axes among the, 157

 Champignolles, pit for extraction of flint at, 35

 Changes, geological,
   in cave regions, 521, 525;
   affecting the River Drift, 662, &c.;
   coast-line affected by, 695

 Chantre, M., 133;
   on hafting of celts by savages, 164, 244;
   drift implement found by, in Euphrates valley, 653

 Charms, arrow-heads used as, 364–366;
   hereditary custody of, 469;
   perforated pebbles as, 231

 Charruas, the, lenticular sling-stones used by, 418

 Charters-White, Mr., on the attrition of teeth by grit, 253

 Chert,
   balls of, 249;
   British celt of, 65;
   cores of, in Welsh caves, 521;
   Eskimo use of, for arrow-heads, 25;
   implements of, in Welsh caves, 581;
   Irish tool of, 175

 Chester, the late Rev. Greville J., barrow examined by, 463

 Chieftainship, decorative weapons a mark of, 226

 Children, quartz pebbles in interments of, 467

 Chinese, use of military flail among the, 423

 Chipping flints, relation of, to grinding, 85, 86, 290

 Chisels,
   blacksmiths’ present mode of hafting, 168, 233;
   bone, 177, 433;
   bronze, in Egyptian gold-mines, 6;
   of deer’s horn, 434;
   distribution of, 177;
   Maori hafting of, 178;
   and picks, 173–177

 Chlorite,
   whetstone of, 269;
   slate, plates of, in interment, 398

 Chloritic albite,
   celts of, 109;
   stone, hatchet and haft made of one piece of, 171

 Chronology
   of Neolithic Period, difficulty of ascertaining, 471;
   of the River Drift attempted, 705, &c.;
   of stone implements, purely retrogressive, 473

 _Cidares_, fossil, in interments, 469

 Cilix, myth of, 313

 Circles, concentric, on stones, 463

 Circular habitation, stone cup in, 450

 Circumcision, use of stone knives in, 9

 Cissbury,
   flint manufactory at, 33;
   objects found at, 32, 81;
   Neolithic fauna at, 80;
   General Pitt Rivers’ explorations at, 78–82

 Cists in barrows, objects found in, 248, 330, 453–456, &c.

 Civilization
   of maritime tribes in time of Cæsar, 10;
   degree of, among the cave-dwellers, 657

 _Clach-nathrach_, 437

 Clalam Indians, 105, 166

 Clan Chattons, stone charm in the possession of the, 469

 Claudian,
   _religiosa silex_ of, 10;
   flint and steel mentioned by, 16;
   on the _ceraunia_ of Pyrenean caves, 481

 Clavigero
   on the rate of obsidian working, 24;
   on metal Mexican axes, 155

 Clay,
   burnt, loom weights of, 443
   ironstone, celt of, 120
   pipe, implement found in, 602
   slate, celts of, 65, 106, 114, 136
   valley-forming in, 677
   vessels, instruments possibly used in shaping, 266, 432, 434

 Climate, zoological evidences as to change of, 584, 699

 Clinch, Mr. G., 248;
   ovate implement found by, 604

 Clod-crusher of stone, 239

 Cloth, Irish, celt used for giving gloss to, 440

 Cloud River Indians, use of bone punch by, 25

 Clouston, Mr., drift implements found by, 597

 Club, so-called, of hone slate, 118

 “Coal money,” 447, 448;
   traces of lathe on, 465

 “Coast finds,” so-called sling-stones in, 419

 Coast line, variations in, 617, 695

 Cochet, Abbé, on flints in Merovingian interments, 314

 Cocks, metallic, pole lathe still used for making, 447, _note_

 Codrington, Mr. T.,
   on Southampton drift, 626;
   on Hampshire deposits, 687, 688;
   on origin of Solent, 690, 692;
   his section across Isle of Wight, 693

 Coffin
   of oak in barrow, 185;
   at Hove, contents of, 449

 _Coin de foudre_, 57

 Collections
   of Aymard, M., of Le Puy, 114, 202, 402;
   Banks, late Rev. S., 103, &c.;
   Beloe, Mr. E. M., 142;
   Borgia, 62;
   Bourgeois, Abbé, 322;
   Braybrooke, the late Lord, 144, 173;
   Brent, the late Mr. J., 102, 613, 618, &c.;
   Brooke, Mr., of Marlborough, 18, 107, 227, &c.;
   Chaplain Duparc, 43;
   Christy, _passim_;
   Cursiter, Mr., of Kirkwall, 124, 171, 190, 221, 224, 252;
   Clément, Dr., 161;
   Courvale, M. de, 161;
   Duke, the late Rev. E., 267;
   Durden (in Brit. Mus.), 69, 93, 125, 126, 174, 176, 230;
   Evans, _passim_;
   Finlay, late Dr., of Athens, 114, 205;
   Flower, the late J. W., 74, 93, 107, 125, 175, 247–255, 291, 295, 309;
   Foresi, 367;
   Greenwell, _passim_;
   Jewitt, the late Mr. Llewellynn, 198, 202, 352;
   Klemm, 49, 157, 163, 165, 252, 294;
   Litchfield, Mr., 326;
   Lucas, the late Mr. J. F., 96, 107, 136, 343, 352, 463;
   Meyrick, 195, 351, 423, 575, &c.;
   Monkman, the late Mr. C., 92, 121, 122, 188, 191, 319, 333, 334, 342;
   Mortimer, Messrs., of Driffield, _passim_;
   Neuberg, Baron de, 51;
   Perthes, Boucher de, 226, 327;
   Poley, the late Rev. W. Weller, 341;
   Ransom, Mr. W., 196;
   Reboux, M., 187;
   Rivers, General Pitt, 88, 140, 144, 155, 231, 247, 277, 278, 279, 309,
       332, 334;
   Sturge, Dr. Allen, see Greenwell;
   Warren, the late Mr. Joseph, of Ixworth, 88, 110, 113, 192, 229, 539

 Comb-like instruments in Kent’s Cavern, 489, 492

 Commerce in amber, 449

 Commodus, the Emperor, his skill in archery, 396

 Cone of percussion, 273, 274

 Congarees, stone implements of the, 241

 Continent, British connection with, in Drift Period, 698

 Contracted position in interments, 149

 Conyers, Mr., “British weapon” found by, 581, 582

 Cooking vessels of steatite, 451

 Copeland, Colonel A. J., 173;
   pointed drift implement obtained by, 613

 Copiapo, human vertebra, with arrow-head embedded, found near, 406

 Copper, bracelet of, 405;
   needle, 440;
   smelted, in Kent’s Cavern, 492

 Copper mines,
   American, stone hammers in, 235;
   of Maghara, 6;
   objects found in old workings of, 233;
   Spanish, &c., mauls found in, 234

 _Corbicula fluminalis_,
   former presence of, 578, 584, 586;
   found above worked flints, 606;
   found below drift implements, 621

 Cores or nuclei, 20, 23, 276;
   boat-shaped, 27;
   and flakes, their mutual relation, 31, 272;
   possibly resulting from tube-boring, 47;
   flint, used as hammers, 248;
   occasionally used as sling-stones, 419;
   palæolithic, from Kent’s Cavern, 503;
   flakes refitted to, 20, 598, 606;
   long, their absence from River Drift, 648

 _Corisco_, Portuguese name for stone axe, 59

 Corn-crushers
   from Swiss Lake-dwellings and others, 246, 250;
   -grinding, Irish, 251, 258;
   -mills, stone spindles for, 242

 _Coscinopora globularis_, possible use of, as beads, 657

 Cotton, Mr., his gift of flint arrow-heads to Dr. Plot, 362

 “Cramp-stones,” ammonites used as, 470

 Crannog,
   possible hatchet-haft found in, 155;
   ridged hammer stones in, 247;
   scraper from, 310;
   polished stone discs in, 440

 Craveri, Signor, on Mexican arrow-making, 39

 Crawshay, Mr. de B., palæolithic implements found by, 605, 608

 Crayford beds, Arctic fauna of, 607

 Crescent-like implements, 559, 571

 Crinkling of flint dagger-handles, 359

 Croll, Mr., as to date of Arctic Period, 705

 Cross-bow, use of by Romans, 411

 Cross-chipping,
   practice of, in Scandinavia, 28;
   shewn by Greek obsidian cores, 28

 Crystal,
   balls of, in Merovingian graves, 470;
   arrow-heads of, 406;
   quartz, modern use of as pick, 235;
   used as drill, 322

 _Culter lapideus_, 289

 Cuming, Mr. Syer,
   as to so-called club, 118;
   on slickstone, 442

 _Cuneus fulminis_, 63

 Cunnington, Mr. W.,
   barrows examined by, 83, 460;
   celt belonging to, 91

 Cup-shaped
   marks on stones, 245;
   vessels of chalk, 450, 451

 Cups
   in interments, of hollow flints, 83;
   ornamented, 148;
   earthenware, 149;
   rude, 266;
   with pyrites, 313;
   with jet objects, 352;
   containing arrow-heads, 399, 432;
   with gold ornaments, 427;
   with amber beads, 429;
   handled, 444, 449;
   turned in lathe, 446–449;
   wooden, 448;
   of amber, 449;
   of gold, 449

 “Curing-stones,” 469

 Currier’s tool, perforated stone used as, 442

 Carved edge
   to implements, 576, 624;
   knives, 355–358;
   recess in palæolithic flake, 555

 Cushing, Mr., arrow-head made by, 39

 Custom House rates, “slick-stones” in table of, 441

 Cutting powers of flint, 289

 Cutting tools of slaty stone, 344;
   for holding in hand, 247;
   modern use of, 348

 D

 Dacotahs, pump-drill used by, 48

 D’Acy, M. E., on implements of the French caves, 511

 Daggers,
   bronze, in interments, 185, 193, 194, 208, 211, 212, 214, 268,
       269, 331, 398, 448;
   with gold on handle, 227;
   fluted, 331

   flint, in interments, 208, 313, 353, &c.;
   for holding in hand, 348;
   leaf-shaped, 352;
   leaf-shaped, unknown in Ireland, 353;
   notched, 353;
   square-handled, 353;
   Egyptian and Danish, with crinkled handles, 359;
   handles of, used for re-chipping, 414

   bone, 431

 Dagger-knives,
   bronze, in interments, 265, 309, 313;
   flint, 208, 313;
   highly worked Danish, 413, 414

 Damour, M. A., on materials of celts, 66

 Dana on the malleability of meteoric iron, 5

 Danish flint daggers,
   ornamentation of, 42;
   perforated celts, 114;
   celts of great size, 118;
   tumuli, iron found in, 144;
   handled scrapers, 308;
   graves, needles in, 433

 Darbishire, Mr. R. D., finds of celts, 84, 152, 236

 Darwin, Mr. W. E., 624

 Daubrée and Roulin, M.M., on Mexican razors, 290

 David, possible nature of his sling, 417

 Dawkins, Prof. Boyd,
   on flints upon Roman sites, 283;
   on the fauna of British caves, 485;
   on human skull in Cheddar cave, 486;
   on condition of bones from cave-earth, 508;
   on Brixham cave, 512;
   on Welsh caves, 521;
   on Crayford beds, 607;
   ovate implement found by, 611;
   on possible glaciation of N. Britain in Mammoth period, 697;
   on the extinction of some Post-Glacial animals, 704

 Dawson, Mr. W. C., on a supposed hafted celt, 153

 _Débâcle_, results of, on the Rhine, 672

 De Bonstetten, 287, 470

 Decorations, personal, 452–472

 Deer, representations of on stag’s horn adze, 434, 435

 Deer’s horn, see Stag’s horn.

 Deluge, stone implements taken as evidence of, 526

 Dendritic-markings
   on implements, 558;
   as testimony to authenticity of implements, 659;
   to what cause due, 660

 Denmark,
   approximate dates of Periods in, 2, 23;
   bracers in, 430;
   cores of boat-shaped form from, 27;
   square-sided hatchets from, 32;
   grinding stones, 43;
   mode of testing thunderbolts in, 57;
   general use of flint for celts in, 85;
   comparative rarity of arrow-heads in, 404

 Denudation,
   opening of caves by, 478;
   of the Fen country, 680, 681;
   of Hampshire gravels, 688

 Deposits,
   implementiferous, due to river action, 696;
   marine, in Fen gravels, 681, 686;
   ossiferous, in caves, 478;
   in valleys, varying with the elevation, 699, 701

 Depressions for holding, worked in cutting tool, 344

 Desor, Professor,
   on method of boring stone, 51;
   referred to, 159, 161, 310

 Detritus, amount of, brought down by rivers, 667, 705

 Deventer, modern use of stone axe at, 157

 Devonian limestone, caverns in, 491, 512

 Dickinson, the late Mrs.,
   on collective burial of celts, 75;
   her collection referred to, 93, 465

 Diodorus Siculus
   on the use of stone in embalming, 8;
   on the implements of the Ichthyophagi, 288

 Diorite,
   axe-hammer of, 205;
   axe-head of, 213;
   bastard-gouge of, 182;
   polished celt of, 107;
   ring of, 465

 Discs,
   imperforate, 440
   perforate, of dolerite, 230;
   as fly-wheels of drilling-sticks, 231;
   of jet, 455;
   ovoid, in Kent’s Cavern, 493;
   possible uses of, 244, 439;
   quoit-like, 440;
   sharp-rimmed, 216

 Discoidal implements possibly used as missiles, 648

 Discoloration of flints, evidence afforded by, 659, 660, 661

 Dish with lid, 451

 Dishes,
   stone, 440;
   with handles, 451

 Distaff and spindle, recent use of, 436, 437

 Divining, grooved stone used in, 470

 Dog,
   bones of in cist, 426;
   first appearance of, in Neolithic times, 486

 Dolmens of Brittany,
   arrow-heads in, 385, 400;
   axe-hammer in, 212;
   carved illustration of celt in, 153;
   jadeite celts in, 109;
   chisel-ended implement from, 395;
   long whetstone from, 268;
   pyrites and flint in, 318

   of other parts of France, lance-heads from, 352, 354;
   polished chisel from, 176;
   stag’s horn sockets from, 160;
   worked flakes, 327;
   Danish, stone bracer in, 430;
   Spanish, arrow-heads in, 430

 Dolomieu,
   on French gun-flint making, 18;
   his estimate of work of _Caillouteur_, 21

 Dolomitic conglomerate, cave in, 517

 Domestic use, instruments for, 436, 599

 _Donderbeitels_ and _Donnerstein_, 58, 63

 Dordogne caves,
   objects from, 262, 292, 296, 312, 329;
   nature of, 476;
   deposits in, 478, 480

 Doughty, Mr. Charles M., his finds at Hoxne, 376

 Douglas, Mr., suggestion as to celt in interment, 145

 Downes, Mr. W., chert implement found by, 639

 Drainage area of ancient Solent River, 691, 692

 Drift-stages of the Darent Valley, 690

 Drill,
   antiquity of use of, 48;
   hollow, probable use of in America, 50

 Drilling
   by flint-flakes, 321;
   by quartz crystals, 322

 “Drinking cups.” See Cups.

 “Druidical circle,” 149;
   objects found in, 197

 _Druten-stein_, as charm against witches, 469

 Dubois, Dr., his _Pithecanthropus_, 703

 Dugdale, Sir William, on stone celts, 3

 “Dug-out” canoes hollowed by stag’s horn chisels, 434

 Dunn, Mr. E. J., African drift-implement found by, 653

 Dupont, Dr. E.,
   on a worn nodule of pyrites, 318;
   his investigation of Belgian caves, 481;
   his classification of cave deposits, 482

 D’Urban, the late Mr. W. S. M., on the ballast pit at Broom, 639

 E

 Ear-rings, bronze, in interment, 207

 Earthenware,
   cup of, in interment, 149;
   spindle whorls of, 439

 East Anglia, relations of palæolithic deposits in, 577

 _Eben_, double meaning of, 443

 _Echini_, fossil, in interments, 468, 469

 Edkins, Mr. Joseph, on stone hatchets in China, 114

 Eggs of wild goose, portions of in Fisherton beds, 631

 Egypt,
   boring by tubes in, 51;
   drill and bow used in, 48;