54 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



at Hoxne, Icklingham, and Thetford — these places being situated at 

 the angles of an acute -angled triangle ; and if we suppose that the 

 implements were indeed carried down by the streams near which 

 they are found, we must conclude that not only these three rivers, 

 but also the Somme, the Avon, the Great Ouse, and some others, in 

 Picardy, in Hants, and in Kent, of the existence of which there are 

 no longer the slightest traces — rivers, be it remembered, lying far 

 apart from each other, and belonging to different water-systems — 

 were all during one and the same geological epoch flowing through 

 countries in which these worked flints had been fabricated, and 

 overflowing their banks and carrying away the implements in their 

 course. 



With reference to this question it is also important to consider the 

 position in which the implements are usually found. "When they 

 occur in profusion, as at St. Acheul and Thetford, and some other 

 ' places, they are seldom found in the overlying laminated sands and 

 gravels, but are seen to rest immediately, or almost immediately, upon 

 the Chalk or other subjacent rock. Had they been brought down 

 by freshets or river-floods we should expect to find them in layers, 

 indicating alternate periods of repose and disturbance ; whereas their 

 actual position leads rather to the belief that they were all trans- 

 ported at one and the same time, together with the drift-gravel and 

 sand lying loose upon the surface, into the then existing hollows and 

 valleys. The deposits thus formed would doubtless be acted upon, 

 and partially broken up by succeeding floods, and their materials 

 would be redistributed ; and it is to some such process that we may 

 attribute the presence of these objects in the brick- earth and other 

 overlying beds, in which they sometimes (although sparingly) 

 occur. 



Beveral other considerations may be noticed which seem to mili- 

 tate against the theory of river- transport as regards these beds. If, 

 indeed, their formation is to be attributed to the rivers near which 

 they are found, where did the people dwell who have left in so narrow 

 a space such abundant traces of their existence ? whence were de- 

 rived those masses of sand and gravel in which the implements are 

 imbedded ? and by what agencies were they carried to their present 

 position ? The "Waveney runs nearly east, while the Ouse and the 

 Larke go north-west, the two former taking their rise in a marsh 

 within a few yards of each other, and then flowing in opposite direc- 

 tions. It seems highly improbable that while one of these rivers 

 was carrying the flint implements in one direction, two others, in 

 the immediate neighbourhood, were taking them in the opposite 

 direction, or that the population of the limited area drained by the 

 Ouse should have been provided with such a profusion of imple- 

 ments, as that several hundreds of them, in addition to a great 

 jiumber which, doubtless, have not been noticed, should be buried in 

 a space the dimensions of which do not exceed three or four hundred 

 square yards. 



But, further, the present rivers, even at their very highest floods, 

 are quite inadequate in volume and velocity for the transport of the 



