50 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



As regards its geological relations and position, this deposit seems 

 closely to correspond with the flint-implement-bearing beds of 

 Amiens, as these again agree with those of Eisherton, Milford Hill, 

 the Reculvers, Bemerton, Hoxne, Ickhngham, and Biddenham. At 

 the Reculvers they repose npon the Thanet sands ; where the Boulder- 

 clay is present, they rest in hollows or valleys of that formation ; 

 where it is absent, they are found on the eroded surface of the Chalk. 

 In one locality, lately discovered and not yet described, they are on 

 the surface of the Gault ; and where there is neither Chalk nor Gault 

 (as at Biddenham) they rest on the Oolite. In all cases the super- 

 incumbent beds consist of flint-gravel and siliceous and calcareous 

 sands, more or less mixed with Tertiary boulders, and usually covered 

 by a capping of loess. At Hoxne these beds are more argillaceous. 



The close resemblance which these implements, and others like 

 them discovered elsewhere in England, bear to those of the valley of 

 the Somme, is a circumstance which cannot but have an important 

 bearing upon all questions relating to their origin and history. The 

 material from which they are made is in all the same, namely, chalk- 

 flint — not, however, as it seems to me, as it is found in situ, but flint- 

 pebbles or nodules as found on the surface of the land or in the 

 channels or banks of rivers. In almost every specimen a part of the 

 original coating of the flint is left at the butt or round end, showing 

 from its battered surface and from the discoloration of the flint 

 beneath (sometimes extending to the depth of a quarter of an inch) 

 that before the implement was shaped the stone from which it was 

 wrought had been long exposed to atmospheric influences, and to 

 various mechanical and chemical changes. 



In other important particulars the Thetford deposit agrees with 

 those above alluded to — namely, in the entire absence, as well of all 

 other works of art, as of human remains, and in the presence of 

 bones of the Elephant. A tradesman in Thetford has part of a 

 molar of Ele^has primigenius, a fossil which has hitherto been inva- 

 riably found with these objects. Mr. Evans has also seen bones of 

 an ox and a horse's tooth from Eedhill ; and I have obtained portions 

 of an elephant's tusk and a horse's tooth from the same spot. No 

 traces of land or freshwater shells have yet been observed. 



Erom these details it is evident that, so far as is known, the flint 

 implements of the drift ofErance and England are the same in mate- 

 rial, in design, and in workmanship — that the strata in which they 

 occur are also alike in mineral character and condition, and in their 

 geological order, and alike, also, as regards the presence of certain 

 fossil remains, and the absence of others. 



From these correspondences some additional light, as well in an 

 ethnological as in a geological point of view, will perhaps be thrown 

 on the much-debated question of their origin. If we are not enabled 

 to fix their date with any degree of precision, we may yet approach 

 it more nearly than heretofore ; and thus these singular objects will 

 be further removed from the category of casual and abnormal condi- 

 tions, and approach to a distinct geological rank and order. 



Consistently with the analogies drawn from other phenomena, we 



