294 
Deposits containing Flint Implements. f July, 
i860. In this treatise the author gives a diagram showing 
the deposits in question lying in a trough cut out in the 
boulder clay. Though this section is confessedly only 
theoretical, it was accepted by Sir Charles Lyell and others 
as an aCtual one, and afterwards the author himself wrote 
as if he had proved his theory to be true,* which he may well 
be excused for having done, when it had been accepted by so 
many eminent geologists. 
The writings of Prof. Prestwich are admirable in this, as 
in other respeCts, that although he indulges in wide-reaching 
theories he invariably gives the evidence on which they are 
founded. Thus, in the memoir in question, in addition to 
the theoretical diagram he gives another, showing the aCtual 
faCts observed, and also careful details of the various sec- 
tions observed by him. It is therefore possible to check his 
theory by his faCts, and in the present paper I shall do so, 
and also give the results of my own examination of the 
Hoxne distridt. 
Mr. John Frere, so long ago as the first year of the present 
century, communicated to the Society of Antiquaries an 
“ Account of Flint Weapons discovered at Hoxne, in 
Suffolk. ”t He stated that they were found in great num- 
bers in a bed of gravel which was overlaid by 1 foot of sand 
with shells, and containing the jaw-bone and teeth of an 
enormous animal ; the sand being again covered by 7J feet 
of brick clay. Mr. Frere noticed that the strata lay hori- 
zontally, and had been denuded to form the present valley, 
and therefore concluded that they belonged to a period when 
the configuration of the surface was different from what it 
is now, and he considered that their antiquity was possibly 
“ even beyond that of the present world.” The manner in 
which the flint implements lay, and their great abundance, 
led Mr. Frere to conclude that a manufactory of them had 
been carried on at the place where he found them. 
The discovery does not appear to have excited any atten- 
tion at the time, and for more than half a century remained 
unnoticed. In 1859, when the discovery of flint implements 
in the Valley of the Somme, in France, in association with 
the remains of the mammoth and other extinCt mammals, 
had at last aroused the attention of geologists, Mr. Frere’s 
memoir was brought by Mr. John Evans before the notice 
of Mr. Prestwich, who had just returned from Amiens. He 
soon after visited Hoxne, and carefully examined into the 
faCts of the case. He found that the bed of brick clay was 
* Philosophical Transactions, 1864, p. 253. 
j Archteologia, 1800, vol. xiii., p. 206. 
