3i6 



NATURE 



[November i8, 1915 



The Etymology of " Chincough." 



I THINK your correspondent, " M. D." (Nature, 

 October 28), is wrong when he says that the Dutch 

 word kinken means to cough. There is a Dutch 

 verb kinken, at least I find it in the list of Dutch 

 words of de Vries and te Winkel, but I never heard 

 it, nor do I know its meaning. Hoest is the Dutch 

 for cough (German hasten) ; the verb is hoesten. 

 Kinkhoest is whooping-cough (the Dutch oe to be 

 pronounced like the German u). 



A Dutchman. 



PREHISTORIC FLINT MINING. 



THE numerous pits in the chalk at Weeting-, 

 Norfolk, commonly known as Grime's 

 Graves, have long attracted attention, but the 

 only exhaustive study of them made until last 



From the whole of the evidence Canon Green- 

 well concluded that the flint-working- was of Neo- 

 lithic date, and subseiquent researches at Cissbury 

 and other localities where flint was mined seemed 

 to confirm this conclusion. When, however, dis- 

 coveries in the French and Spanish caverns re- 

 vealed a regular succession of fashions in the 

 making of stone implements, a study of the 

 worked flints from Grime's Graves and Cissbury 

 suggested that many of these were of a late 

 Palaeolithic rather than of a Neolithic pattern. 

 The Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, therefore^ 

 with characteristic energy, decided to examine the 

 question further, and in the spring of 191 4 it 

 undertook a most painstaking- excavation and 

 examination of two typical pits in the group of 

 Grime's Graves. The work was done under the 



-End of gallery at bottom of pit showing thrte picks of deer antlers left by the miners adjacent to the layer of tabular flint 

 (black) which they were working. 



year was that of Canon William Green well, who 

 proved in 1870 that they represent prehistoric 

 flint mines. In the account of his results Canon 

 Greenwell remarks that there "can be no doubt 

 that the whole space occupied by the pits is a 

 complete network of g-alleries," and he shows that 

 the flint obtained from the mines was worked into 

 implements on the spot. How extensive was this 

 industry may be realised from the fact that the 

 pits are from three to four hundred in number, 

 and occupy an area of not less than twenty acres. 

 They vary from about nineteen to more than 

 eighty feet in diameter, and all are filled to within 

 a few feet of the surface with material which 

 seems for the most part to have been thrown in 

 by the miners themselves. 

 NO. 2403, VOL. 96] 



immediate direction of Mr. A. E. Peake, whose 

 exhaustive report, accompanied by the valuable 

 notes of several specialists, has now been pub- 

 lished by the Society. 1 



The mining- seems to have been done chiefly 

 with picks made of red deer antlers, of which no 

 fewer than 244 were discovered in the two shafts 

 and the galleries connected with them. Three of 

 these picks, as they were left by the miners, are 

 shown in the accompanying- photograph (Fig. i). 

 Some were found to be so well preserved that 

 even finger-prints could be distinctly observed on 

 the adherent mud. The blocks of flint were 



\ Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. Report on the Excavations at 

 Grime's Graves, Weeting, Norfolk, March-May. 1914. Edited by W. G. 

 Clarke, Hon. Sec. (London : H. K. Lewis, 1915.) Price, 5J. net. 



