A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
the plain side, not illustrated, but seen on the edge views at BB. 
These were probably used for scraping flesh from bones, chiefly perhaps 
by the older folk who had no teeth equal to the task. 
Fig. 16 shows a peg-like tool made from a flake, the bulb of per- 
cussion being on the plain side at a. Many examples of tools of this 
nature, some more highly finished, have been found. 
They somewhat resemble the neolithic fabricator or 
strike-light. 
A fossil from the chalk named Coscinopora globularis is common in the 
Bedford gravels. These curious fossils are each about the size of a 
cherry, white in colour and furnished with a natural perforation. 
Collections of them have several times been found in company with 
implements and flakes, and it is possible that paleolithic people used them 
for personal decoration as beads. Many have been found with the natural 
orifice enlarged as if for more convenient insertion of a ligament. Examples 
from Bedford are in the British Museum. 
Until quite recent times it was customary to speak of paleolithic 
tools as river-drift implements because they were almost invariably found 
associated with beds of gravel, sand and clay, which had previously been 
laid down by our present rivers. ‘The implements nearest a river and on 
the lower terraces were considered to be the newer, and those on the 
higher terraces the older. From the first however certain implements 
found on certain high positions and more or less removed from the present 
rivers were suspected to be ofa still greater age, and to belong to the river 
drift of streams which, owing to the then different configuration of the 
country and a subsequent change in the valleys, did not run in the present 
river valleys. In some instances ancient afHluents of present rivers, as 
shown by the contours on maps, must have been dry long prior to neo- 
lithic times, because neolithic implements and flakes are now spread 
generally all over the dry surfaces. ‘There is a former affluent of the 
Lea of this class at No-man’s-land Common near Wheathampstead, 
Herts, and when the dry banks of this earlier rivulet are excavated 
paleolithic implements are found. 
A good paleolithic flake was found by the writer at Dunstable 
in 1884. This, with one or two minor finds of the same class, and the 
finding of implements at Dunstable later on, led him to search the hills, 
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