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V. Stone Implements from the Neighbourhood of 



Chelmsford, Essex. 



By Henry Corder. 



[Read April 30th, 1881.] 



Plate II. 



About three years since a man who was formerly in our 

 employ brought to me a very fine specimen of a Neolithic 

 spear-head, dagger, or knife, measuring six and a half inches 

 long by two and a half inches wide. It is very thin, and 

 beautifully chipped, but not polished. Near one end are 

 notches, three on one side and two on the other, apparently 

 to serve as catches when binding the celt to the shaft or 

 handle. 



The specimen came from a gravel pit near the " Admiral's 

 Park," Chelmsford; and the workman asserts that while 

 standing at the bottom of the pit, and working at the gravel 

 with a pole, he disengaged it from a seam of larger stones 

 about twelve feet from the surface. The soil above is not 

 very thick, so that there would be many feet of gravel above 

 the implement. The celt has no signs of wear or of gravel 

 stains upon it, and I am told that it could not have come 

 from undisturbed gravel. In support of the one theory, I 

 have the man's own statement that he poked it out himself 

 from the stones which he considered to be undisturbed. 

 This would be a seam probably almost free from the red fer- 

 ruginous colour and adhesive qualities of ordinary gravel. 

 At the spot in question the stratum is evidently, I think, 

 valley gravel from the River Cann, about 200 yards from the 

 bank, and perhaps thirty feet above the water level. In 

 support of the other view, viz., that the soil was not undis- 

 tm-bed, we have the assertion of a former owner of the pit 

 that a quantity of bones of animals, and, I think, stags' 



