CHAP. IX. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 1G3 



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 northeast, and the flowing of rivers from the east- 

 ernmost parts of Kent and Essex into the Thames, instead 

 of emptying themselves 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 among 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 W.N.W. 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 



