Vol. 60.] 1MPLEMENTIFER0US SECTIONS AT WOLVERCOTE. 129 



gravels, which it is difficult to believe of later age. It is of some 

 importance if an implement has been made from a weathered 

 pebble of the surface. When I first began to collect and examine 

 these tools in the parish of Limpsfield in Surrey, where they lie 

 largely on the surface, I found two classes, often very distin- 

 guishable — tools of surface-flints, and later tools of quarried flint. 

 This distinction appears again in Oxfordshire, and is probably of 

 some importance. 



The last distinction is one which I must consider of great 

 importance. The river-bed flints are slightly weathered, or not 

 at all ; while the Drift-flints are deeply weathered, white or 

 brown, usually all over, always at least partially. Flint-fragments 

 from the river-bed present a totally different appearance from 

 fragments taken from the Drift : from the river-bed they are black 

 or transparent ; from the Drift they are ochreous and opaque. 

 This is an important fact ; and I draw from it two inferences, 

 which are also important and may provoke discussion. I was told, 

 twenty years ago, by one of the fathers of this study : 



' From the weathering of a flint no inference can be drawn. I have fre- 

 quently found in the same bed, side by side, woi'ked flints — one quite fresh, 

 the other weathered and worn.' 



This silenced me at the time ; but a proper answer would have 

 been : 



' Yes ; but your two flints were not of the same age. The unweathered flint 

 was contemporary with the bed where you found it ; the weathered one 

 originally lay in another bed, where it was stained ; it was dislodged after 

 a long burial, exposed and rolled, and finally deposited in a fresh bed. where it 

 was a fossil detached from an earlier deposit.' 



It is certain that the weathered character explains man}' diffi- 

 culties in classifying implements. For example : at Iffley, a mile 

 below Oxford, there is another implement-bearing gravel. It 

 stands at a lower level than those previously described ; its base is 

 very nearly on a line with the surface of the present river, about 

 300 yards distant. It is consequently of a later age than either of 

 the Wolvercote deposits ; but it does not follow that all its contents 

 are of a later age, or contemporary with the deposition of the 

 gravel-bed in which they lie. Quite the contrary ; it is an omnium 

 gatherum of all the debris that ever rolled in the Thames Valley : 

 Oolitic fossils, Cretaceous fossils, Tertiary conglomerate, Xorthern- 

 Drift quartzites, jaspers, and volcanic rocks, gravel, and sand. When 

 in this gravel an unweathered implement occurs, I think that I am 

 justified in correlating it with the unweathered river-bed imple- 

 ments of Wolvercote ; whereas, if the implement has an ochreous 

 staining, I consider that it once belonged to the Drift-bed, of 

 which so few fragments now remain in situ. Such an inference 

 encroaches upon certainty : I feel inclined to add that all ochreous 

 or deeply-patinated implements are of the same or similar age, 

 wherever they are found. 



My second inference is, that the time between the Drift and the 

 Q. J.G. S. No. 238. k 



