CHAP. IX. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN SUFFOLK. 169 



several land shells. In the black j)eaty mass No. 5, fragments 

 of wood of the oak, yew, and fir have been recognized. The 

 flint weapons which I have seen from Hoxne are so much 

 more pei-fect, and have their cutting edge so much sharper, 

 than those from the valley of the»tSomme, that they seem 

 neither to have been used by man, nor to have been rolled in 

 the bed of a river. The opinion of Mr. Frere, therefore, that 

 there may have been a manufactory of weapons on the spot, 

 appears probable. 



Flint Implements at Icklingham in Suffolk 



In another part of Suffolk, at Icklingham, in the valley of 

 the Lark, below Bury St. Edmund's, there is a bed of gravel, 

 in which tw^o flints of a lance-head form have been found at 

 the depth of four feet from the surface. I have visited the 

 spot, which has been correctly described by Mr. Prestwich.* 



The section of the Bedford tool-bearing alluvium, given at 

 p. 164, may serve to illustrate that of Icklingham, if we sub- 

 stitute chalk for oolite, and the river Lark for the Ouse. In 

 both cases, the present bed of the river is about thirty feet 

 below the level of the old gravel, and the chalk hill, which 

 bounds the valley of the Lark on the right side, is capped 

 like the oolite of Biddenham by boulder clay, which rises to 

 the height of one hundred feet above the Lark. About 

 twelve 3^ears ago, a large erratic block, above four feet in 

 diameter, was dug out of the boulder clay at Icklingham, 

 which I found to consist of a hard siliceous schist, apparently 

 a Silurian rock, which must have come from a remote region. 

 The tool-bearing gravel here, as in the case to which it has 

 been compared near Bedford, is proved to be newer than the 

 glacial drift, by containing pebbles of basalt and other rocks 

 derived from that formation. 



••■■ Quarterly Geological Journal, 1861, vol. xvii. p. 364. 



