Fan. 18, 1883 | 
NATURE 
273 
ever, that was “found’’ (as proved by the flaking of | living places stretched in unbroken lines on the old river 
medium age) was new as compared with the older, highly- 
abraded examples. There is other evidence of the ex- 
treme antiquity of these things. They are a// beneath the 
“trail and warp.” Now the “trail’’ belongs to 
geological time, and the period of its deposition 
is so remote that one can only guess at its age 
in years. The newest palzolithic implements 
are every one beneath and older than the “trail,” 
how very much older, then, must be the oldest 
implements. The proofs that they are really older 
I have given. ; 
The tools of the later palzolithic period show 
a marked development of the hand in the makers, 
for the chippers of these later tools had learned 
to hold small instruments with the fingers, much 
as we now hold a small pen, pencil or knife. From 
the rude and heavy bludgeonthemen had advanced 
to beautiful oval and ovate forms almost perfect 
in geometrical precision. The progress from the 
large and rude, to the extremely small and neat scraper, 
shows that the men had probably progressed in the art of 
dressing skins, and in every way did finer and neater things. 
That these men and women now wore necklaces, and 
possibly bracelets, seems proved by the fact of specimens 
of Coscinopora globularis, D’Orb., occurring with the natural 
Fic. 4. 
orifice, artificially enlarged. I have several specimens 
thus enlarged from a horde of more than two hundred, 
examples all found together near Bedford. Mr. James 
Wyatt, F.G.S., noticed a similar fact, as recorded by him 
in the Geologist 1862, p.234. These later palzolithic men 
lived in large and probably peaceful companies, and their 
banks. 
patches, but places extending for many miles, how large 
they are it is impossible to say from paucity of excavations. 
The “ Paleolithic Floors” are not little isolated 
They are not confined to the valley of the Thames, but 
they occur in many places. 
The newer implements and those of middle age are 
innate with, and have belonged to the gravel from the first. 
The older implements are distinctly “derived” like the 
cretaceous fossils commonly found in the gravel, We know 
whence the fossils have come because they are socommon, 
the abraded ochreous implements on the other hand are 
very rare, and this rarity makes it difficult to say whence 
they have been derived, they possibly belong to none of 
our existing rivers. As in 1868 (Fournal of Anthropological 
SS All 
Soe 
Fic, 6. 
Institute, Feb, 1879), I recorded my discovery of flakes 
and implements in the so-called middle-glacial gravel of 
Amwell, Ware, and Hertford, I have little doubt that the 
older implements found at North-East London have 
been derived from these positions. Whether the above- 
mentioned gravels are really glacial or not, I am not 
prepared to decide. How the implements got into the 
gravel I cannot say. I found them in the ballast thrown 
out of the pits and in the pits themselves. If the gravel 
is glacial could not glaciers have swept up flakes and 
tools from old surfaces in the same way as the “trail” 
has undoubtedly done? 
