BY THE PEESIDEXT. 



197 



The earliest discoveiy of the instruments of which any record 

 has been kept, took place in 1699 or 1700, in Gray's Inn Lane, in 

 London, when an implement was found associated with the remains 

 of an elephant. At that time there were no questions raised as to 

 the antiquity of man, and no doubts were thrown on the discovery, 

 the instrument being supposed to have been used by a Briton to 

 kill an elephant which had been imported by Caesar. Subsequently, 

 at the end of the last century, Mr. Frere communicated a notice to 

 the Society of Antiquaries, giving an account of the discovery of 

 a number of these tools at Hoxne, in Suffolk, and stating that they 

 were found in a brick-pit with the remains of large animals, and 

 under such circumstances as to make it appear that they belonged 

 to what he called " another world." I myself have carried out 

 some explorations in that pit, and here is the butt end of one of 

 these instruments, which 1 saw thrown out from a depth of eight 

 feet of undisturbed gravel. That gives you an idea of the great 

 amount of accumulation found in some cases over these instru- 

 ments. In other cases they are found upon the surface. Here is 

 one I found on the surface between Abbot's Langiey and Bedmond. 

 Here is another from Nash Mills. I found it within a quarter 

 of a mile of my own house on some gravel that was being used 

 for repairing the towing path, which I think had been dredged 

 from the bottom of the valley. 



The levels at which these implements occur are usually far 

 beyond the reach of existing floods. In the case of Highbury > 

 near London, one was found nearly 100 feet above the Thames; 

 and at Ealing they occur something like 90 feet above the river ; 

 but it is impossible to suppose that at any period the floods of the 

 Thames in its valley, as at present existing, reached to such a 

 height ; and even if they did, that they could have deposited the 

 veins of gravel in which the implements occur, and, in addition to 

 these, the beds of sand and brick-earth above them. 



Then the question arises, in what manner can we satisfactorily 

 account for the deposits in which the implements are found ? As 

 I said before, they appear to be drift deposited by the action of 

 rivers, following much the same courses as the rivers of the present 

 day, but flowing at a different level, and it is from the conditions 

 under which they are deposited, and the associated fauna, that we 

 make some inferences as to their antiquity. I have already said 

 that with them have been found the remains of the mammoth, an d in 

 addition there is the rhinoceros, the cave-lion, the hippopotamus, 

 and other animals no longer living in this country, and which had 

 become extinct or had migrated by the time the beds were de- 



