xvm. EARLY TRACES OF MAN. 479 



Shotover, and delivered to me on May 21, 1861. It is made of a 

 yellowish grey sectile, uniformly fine-grained stone, on which steel 

 is rapidly smoothed as on a soft hone, such as might perhaps 

 be obtained in a metamorphic or slaty district, like North Devon. 

 The curved front edge is quite sharp and uninjured. Weight, 

 12 oz. Length, 5*6 inches ; extreme breadth, 2*2 ; greatest thick- 

 ness, 1-25. 



Of later date a bronze { celt/ very perfectly cast, with curved 

 sharp edge and lateral annulus; spear-heads of iron, and coins 

 and pottery of imperial Rome, bring down the long history of man 

 in the Thames valley to our Anglian period, at and near the 

 fortress of some forgotten race which crowns one of the picturesque 

 outliers of chalk at Wittenham, named Sinodun. 



That ( monticule 1 stood up in the broad waters which once filled 

 the Vale of Ock and Thame, between the chalk downs and the 

 oolitic hills ; round the hill and under the waters were spread 

 sheets of gravel, the gift of many ages of watery movement. The 

 waters pass away, the gravel beds are dry ; wild foresters and 

 fishers, hunters and boatmen, dig their homes and find warmth 

 in their native earth. Long hours of leisure in ' winter and rough 

 weather' are given to the chipping and grinding of flints some 

 for ruder work, others for rarer, emblematic, ornamental, or sacred 

 purposes. Then as time passes, but is not counted, celts replace 

 the stones ; war changes the bivouac to a camp ; the Roman road 

 obliterates the British way; Christianity settles in Wessex, and 

 establishes its first episcopal seat at Dorchester under the shadow 

 of Wittenham camp, amidst the ruins of ancient days, forgotten 

 creeds, and unrecorded associations of many-language d men. 



In the peaty deposits, which are of considerable extent and 

 thickness in the lower part of the Vale of Kennet, flint implements 

 have been found with bones of various animals. Two of these 

 implements, similar in general form, 8*1 and 8'2 inches long, 

 2'5 and 2'9 wide at the edge which seems intended for use, and 

 1*25 and 1*5 at the other, are of unusual interest. One is care- 

 fully chipped to a tapering figure ; the other has been so chipped, 

 and afterwards smoothly rubbed down over the whole surface to 

 a curved cutting edge, which is uninjured. Thus they correspond 

 to two already described from Dorchester, and help us to the 

 approximate geological date of the earliest traces of man in our 



