PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 340 



E. Namadacus, Hippopotamus palccindicus, Bos paloeindicus, 

 and B. Namadicus."* 



The specimens found in the Somme Valley, are, as I shall 

 endeavour to show, connected with the present river system, 

 and the same was the case with those first discovered in 

 England. Further researches, however, have brought to light 

 cases in which flint implements have been found in beds of 

 gravel having no relation to the existing river systems. Mr. 

 Flower has called attention to several of these in our eastern 

 counties, and I have had the advantage of visiting them with 

 him. The Shrub Hill gravel-bed, for instance, is a low 

 mound of gravel of about fifteen feet thick, rising in the 

 middle of the fen near Ely, and surrounded on all sides by a 

 low flat district. Mr. Skertchley also has found flint imple- 

 ments in beds which he considers to be earlier than the last 

 period of great cold. 



Some of the Hampshire specimens also have been found in 

 situ, in a mass of drift gravel which covers the tertiary beds, 

 and is intersected by all the streams which now run into the 

 Southampton Water. This mass of gravel, moreover, is not 

 confined to the mainland, but caps also the Foreland Cliffs 

 on the east of the Isle of Wight, where an oval flint imple- 

 ment has recently been discovered by Mr. T. Codrington. 

 As Mr. Evans has pointed out, we seem, in this discovery, to 

 have clear evidence that man existed in this country before 

 the Southampton Water was formed, or the Isle of Wight was 

 separated from the mainland, and we may therefore regard 

 these implements as among the most striking proofs of Man's 

 Antiquity, which they carry back to a period far more ancient 

 than that which had previously been assigned to him. 



We cannot therefore wonder that the statement by Mr. 

 Frere has been distrusted for more than half-a-century ; that 



* Blandford, Geol. Magazine. February, 1866. 



