CHAP. IX. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 163 



land. It is well known that in many places, especially near 

 the coast of Holland, elephants' tusks and other bones are 

 often dredged up from the bed of that shallow sea, and the 

 reader will see in the map given in Chap. XIII. how vast would 

 be the conversion of sea into land by an upheaval of 600 feet. 

 Vertical movements of much less than half that amount would 

 account for the annexation of England to the continent, and 

 the extension of the Thames and its valley far to the north 

 east, and the flowing of rivers from the easternmost parts of 

 Kent and Essex into the Thames, instead of emptying them 

 selves into its estuary. 



More than a dozen flint weapons of the Amiens type have 

 already been found in the basin of the Thames; but the 

 geological position of no one of them has as yet been ascer 

 tained with the same accuracy as that of many of the tools 

 dug up in the valley of the Somme, or some other British 

 examples which will presently be mentioned. 



Flint Implements of the Valley of the Ouse, near Bedford. 



The ancient fluviatile gravel of the valley of the Ouse, 

 around Bedford, has been noted for the last thirty years for 

 yielding to collectors a rich harvest of the bones of extinct 

 mammalia ; those of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopo 

 tamus being amongst the number. Mr. James Wyatt, F.Gr.S., 

 having returned in 1860 from France, where, in the gravel- 

 pits of St. Acheul, near Amiens, he had marked the position 

 of the flint tools, resolved to watch carefully the excavation of 

 the gravel-pits at Biddenham, two miles WNW. of Bedford, 

 in the hope of finding there similar works of art. With this 

 view he paid almost daily visits for months in succession to 

 those pits, and was at last rewarded by the discovery of two 

 well-formed implements, one of the spear-head and the other 

 of the oval shape, perfect counterparts of the two prevailing 



