518 TRANSACTIONS O? SECTION H. 



a thick layer of stalagmite. Fragments of a primitive type of pottery were 

 also found. In a deeper and presumably older part of the floor he discovered 

 the fragmentary remains of a human skeleton of a peculiar type. The bones are 

 mineralised and were embedded in stalagmite. 



An examination of the parts show that they belonged to a man of about 

 1,480 mm. in height (4 feet 10 inches), of stout and muscular build. Although 

 corresponding to the Bushman in stature, he differs from that race in many 

 characters of his skeleton ; in the points wherein he differs from the Bushmen 

 he agrees with the early Neolithic European races, but he possesses certain 

 peculiar features which distinguish him from both of these and from all modern 

 rates. Beyond the mineralised condition of the bones, their peculiar features, 

 and the remains of an apparently extinct form of ibex found with them, there 

 are no means of estimating the degree of antiquity of this peculiar Ronda type 

 of man. Nothing is known of the physical characters of the artists of the 

 Spanish caves. It is possible that the man discovered by Colonel Verner may 

 prove to belong to the artist race. 



WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 



The following Papers and Eeports were read : — ■ 



1. Memorials of Prehistoric Man in Hampshire. 

 % W.Dale, F.S.A., F.G.S. 



The memorials of prehistoric man in Hampshire are connected, firstly, with 

 the great beds of gravel which occur by the sides of its rivers and principally 

 near their mouths. The gravel beds of the Avon from Milford Hill in Wiltshire 

 down to Christchurch in Hants, and the cliff sections at Barton and Milford, 

 at Hillhead, not far from Portsmouth, and at a point in the Isle of Wight nearly 

 opposite, have all yielded palaeolithic implements in great variety. !No district 

 is, however, more prolific than the valleys of the Itchen and the Test. In the 

 gravel pits of the Southampton delta, which is covered with deposits from the 

 rivers, we can see a mass of material from fourteen to twenty feet thick resting 

 upon Bagshot or Bracklesham beds of Eocene age. The material is nearly all 

 sub-angular flints, with here and there a piece of sarsen or a hardened mass of 

 Bracklesham fossils. 



The great age claimed for these gravel beds and for the associated implements 

 is confirmed by the existence near Southampton of several streams which have 

 cut for themselves secondary valleys of great depth right through the gravel 

 since it was deposited and through the underlying beds. One of these valleys, 

 at right angles to the Itchen near St. Denys, attains a depth of about fifty feet. 

 When the Roman station of Clausentum was placed on a bend of the Itchen 

 at the bottom of the valley the physical conditions of the neighbourhood were 

 the same as they are to-day. 



The implements gathered from these gravels are of great variety and are 

 representative of all the various forms into which palpeoliths can be classed. At 

 the same time it is not possible to pick out certain forms and allocate them to 

 distinct horizons as is now done by many on the Continent. There are also 

 many rough and intermediate forms which would be called Eoliths by some. 



Passing to the Neolithic period, Hampshire gives no evidence of any inter- 

 mediate stages or anything to bridge over the great physical and palseontological 

 gap which separates the two periods. As might be expected in a country where 

 flint is abundant, Neolithic implements are plentiful, and specimens of almost 

 all the types known elsewhere in Britain have been found. The most common 

 implement, apart from the simple flakke, is the roughly chipped celt. Celts, very 

 finely chipped, and also those partly or wholly polished, are also found. True 

 arrow-heads, either barbed or leaf-shaped, are not common. Along the coast 

 several small celts of green stone have been found which look like imports from 

 the Continent. Apart from the implements, undoubted relics of Neolithic man 



