A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



found in 1872 an ochreous, water-worn, oval implement, and at a some- 

 what earlier date two other examples, one about a mile north of Bishop's 

 Stortford, and the other farther north still, close to Pesterford Bridge, in 

 Essex. 



The site of the Palaeolithic discoveries at Hitchin hardly lies within 

 the watershed of the Lea, but is near the source of the Hiz, a stream 

 that flows northward to join the Ouse. The implements were first dis- 

 covered here about the year 1876 by a workman who had seen a 

 woodcut of a specimen from the valley of the Somme in an illustrated 

 periodical, and who at once recognized the identity of form between the 

 worked flints from France and some which he had come across in the 

 course of his work, digging clay for the manufacture of bricks at 

 Hitchin. Attention was first called to them at a field meeting of the 

 Watford Natural History Society in June, I877. 1 Since that time 

 numerous implements, including large flakes, have been found in more 



than one of the clay-pits near Hitch- 

 in, presenting various forms, among 

 which, however, the pointed type 

 predominates. A specimen is repre- 

 sented in fig. 6. In 1896 an in- 

 vestigation of the geological condi- 

 tions of the deposits was undertaken 

 at the cost of the British Association 

 and the Royal Society, and was car- 

 ried on by Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., 

 who prepared a careful report upon 

 the subject, published in the Proceed- 

 ings of the Royal Society? The alluvial 

 beds, which are of freshwater origin, 

 present close analogies with those of 

 Hoxne in Suffolk, which have also 

 been exhaustively examined by Mr. 

 Reid, and lie above the chalky boulder 

 clay of the district. The deposits 



FIG. 6. beneath the Palaeolithic brick-earth 



fill a deep channel and contain a 



temperate flora, including such trees as the oak, ash, cornel, elder and 

 alder ; and among the mammalian remains in the brick-earth are bones 

 of rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and mammoth. The whole surface of 

 the surrounding country has been so much modified by denudation 

 subsequently to the formation of the implement-bearing beds, that it is 

 difficult to form an idea as to whence the water from which they were 

 deposited came, or whither it flowed. 



1 Trans. Watford Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. i. p. Ixi. ; Ancient Stone Implements, 2nd ed. 

 p. 536 ; Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Sac., viii. pis. x. and xii. 



2 Vol. Ixi. (1897), p. 40 ; Proc. Geol. dssoc., xiv. (1896), p. 417, 



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