BY THE PRESIDE^TT. 195 



process of rolling, but retain their edges as sharp as on the day they 

 were made. Below there is a silt, in which is found a considerable 

 number of species of river-shells and some land-shells ; and below 

 that again (the thickness of the silt being sis or seven feet, and 

 there being often seams of gravel intermixed in it), is found a bed 

 of coarse, and in some cases finer gravel, five or six feet thick, 

 in which implements more commonly occur, as forming constituent 

 parts of the gravel itself. The late Mr. Flower, of Croydon, dug 

 out, from a depth of twenty feet, a well-formed instrument, which 

 he bequeathed to my collection, and I have myself extracted some 

 from about the same depth at Amiens, which were pointed out to 

 me in situ by the workmen. 



After the discoveries at Amiens and Abbeville became known, 

 Mr. Prestwich and I thought that in all probability there were 

 places in this country where such instruments ought to be dis- 

 covered, and we visited many places which, from analogy, appeared 

 likely to produce such implements, amongst which were Bedford 

 and Salisbury ; but our search was unsuccessful. Attention, 

 however, having been directed to the subj(^ct, and the gravel-pits 

 carefully searched by geologists living on the spots, fiint imple- 

 ments were eventually found associated with the same mammalian 

 fauna as that of the valley of the Somme, and with fresh-water 

 shells nearly similar to those at Amiens. In the valley of the Lark, 

 in the valley of the Little Ouse and "Waveney, in the valley of the 

 Thames at Acton and Ealing, and in several other river- valleys, 

 they have also now been discovered. 



Further down the valley of the Thames, at Reculvers, in the 

 neighbourhood of Heme Bay ; in the south of England, at South- 

 ampton, and other places along the south coast, these things have 

 also been found. Perhaps one of the most curious of these discoveries 

 is that at Southampton, and along the southern shores of the 

 counties of Dorset and Hampshire. There you have a cliff now 

 close to the sea, which is capped with gravel at something like 

 90 feet above high- water mark, and in this gravel these implements 

 have been discovered. 



It is not a little remarkable that, in addition to their occuzTing, 

 as I have pointed out, in France and England, and also in Spain 

 and other parts of Europe (but not generally throughjut Europe), 

 they are found in the East Indies in beds of laterite of great 

 antiquity. 



Having now mentioned some of the places where these imple- 

 ments have been found, and having alluded to the circumstances 

 under which they have been discovered, it will be well to say a 



