Proceedings. KXXV 
and no doubt under the undisturbed turf of the park adjoining abun- 
dance of other specimens exist, as it is in such positions we must look 
for the traces of the early settlements, which were the primitive fore- 
runners of the villages which now exist along the line of the springs 
rising from the chalk. Photographs of some of the flints will be sent 
to the Scientific Portfolio.—H. C. CoLuyEr. 
Surrey Rush Clips.—The Rush Clip is an appliance of iron of the 
rough and ready blacksmith’s kind; like an inverted pair of pincers 
on a stand, and carrying a douser or extinguisher. They were certainly 
used as far back as the thirteenth century, and probably all over 
Europe; they may be even older. They have, curiously enough, 
survived in Surrey as late as 1862, though they are undoubtedly 
extinct now. I was recently talking to a man who was a Surrey farm 
hand in the early sixties. He fully described the method of using a 
Rush Clip, and how they gathered the rushes from the water-side, 
dried them, peeled two strips of the cuticle off, and then soaked the 
rush in hot mutton fat. When cold the rush was practically a taper; 
and he told me how the farmer’s wife cut off a certain length, and no 
more, for a light to light the men to bed. This took place, he assured 
me, in 1861-2. As I pretended absolute ignorance on the subject, and 
as the man gave me a very practical object-lesson in how a Rush Clip 
is worked, I feel sure that he really had actually used them. This 
was near Horley.—Epwarp Lovett. 
May Day Survival in Croydon.—The observance of this ancient 
Scandinavian celebration of the advent of summer and tree worship is, 
unfortunately, rapidly disappearing before the advance of our practical 
and matter-of-fact view of life. The Maypole is almost extinct, except in 
a forced and unnatural sort of way; and the ‘‘ Jack in the Green,” with 
its quaint mixture of incongruities, has now become a thing of the past. 
On May 1st, 1899, I saw in Croydon what may be regarded as a poor 
survival of a former great occasion. A group of small boys carried, 
suspended from a horizontal bar some five feet long, a sort of globular 
cage made of the branches of trees, the whole being decorated with 
flowers and bits of coloured paper (the diameter of this cage was about 
eighteen inches). Inside the cage was fixed a gaily dressed doll—the 
whole representing the Queen of the May in her bower. Another boy 
carried a sort of sceptre, consisting of a piece of wood elaborately 
decorated with flowers and paper ina spiral. This was a devoluted 
Maypole, which was, in its days, the Tree God, with its offerings and 
gifts (vide also the Christmas Tree, which is a Scandinavian myth too). 
The children referred to sang some meaningless verses, doubtless a 
devolution from a song of thankfulness. I questioned them as to why 
they did this and what they knew of it, and found that they knew 
nothing at all about it, and that they did it because others had done 
so before them, and—there was money in it!—Epwarp Lovett. 
MEMBERS ELECTED, 1899. 
February 21st.—George Henderson, St. Katharines, Oxted. 
March 21st.—E. A. Martin, 69, Bensham Manor Road, Thornton 
Heath. E. Alexander, Grasmere, Birdhurst Road. A. Hall, Stanton 
House,,16, Park Hill Rise. Mr, & Mrs, Marten Sells, Lodore, Campden 
Road, 
