president's address. 201 



position, character &c., of instruments. He showed by diagrams 

 the beautiful uniformity of correct observations taken with due 

 precaution in different places. He exhibited tables of the rain- 

 fall for many years, and criticised the data of Mr. Watson's 

 paper in our " Transactions," drawing rather the conclusion that 

 the rain-fall of this country is diminishing, and that, as a practi- 

 cal result, we ought to dig our wells deeper, and provide larger 

 reservoirs for the supply of our towns. 



At our next Evening Meeting, held February 2nd, we turned 

 from meteorology to primeval antiquities. 



Mr. H. T. Mennell read a paper on the Flint Implements 

 from the Drift and Peat, being a copious abstract of whatever has 

 appeared on the subject in the various scientific journals of the 

 day. The beds in which these implements have been found 

 belong to the post -pliocene formation, or drift, of geologists; 

 consisting of beds of gravel, sand, arenaceous clay, and brick- 

 earth j of varying (but often considerable) thickness. The lower 

 beds abound in mammalian remains, chiefly those of the extinct 

 elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, tiger, stag, ox, horse, &c. 

 The beds of sand contain the fragile shells of fresh-water 

 mollusca; and above these are beds of brick-earth. It is in the 

 beds of gravel that the fliiit implements are found. Various 

 writers have mentioned the occurrence of these supposed 

 evidences of man in these deposits. In the year 1797, Mr. Frere 

 (Archceologia, vol. xiii.) recorded the discovery of flint implements 

 at Hoxne, in Suffolk, in conjunction with the remains of elephants, 

 at a depth of 11 or 12 feet from the surface, in gravel, overlaid 

 by sand and brick-earth. There are instances of similar dis- 

 coveries in London and Peterborough. In 1849, M. Boucher de 

 Perthes recorded the occurence of flint implements in the beds 

 near Amiens and Abbeville — some of which flints, by the 

 courtesy of Mr. Prestwich and Mr. Rupert Jones (Secretary of 

 the Geological Society), Mr. Mennell was able to exhibit to the 

 members. Mr. Prestwich and Mr. Evans, visiting France for 

 the purpose of verifying the discoveries of M. Perthes, found the 

 chalk cliffs near Abbeville and Amiens capped with drift, which 

 is continued down into the valleys, where it assumes a more 



