110 Primeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 
month (March, 1882) dug out, with implements, at Stamford 
Hill; it measured 1 ft. 5 in. by 1 ft. 4 in. by 9 in.; another 
from Stoke Newington measured 1 ft. 6 in. by 1 ft. by 1 ft.; 
I also have a record of a block of quartz at Shacklewell 
1 ft. 2 in. in diameter. At Hackney I have seen sandstone 
blocks weighing 2, 8, 4, and even 5 cwt. each excavated 
from the gravel; these were probably carried down the old 
stream on blocks of ice; some exhibit glacial striae. The 
flints now found in the gravels at one time belonged to the 
chalk; they were probably set free soon after the chalk 
emerged from the sea by water dissolving away the chalky 
matrix. Glaciers and blocks of ice then moved the stones south¬ 
wards. The land at that time was many feet higher than now, 
and consequently the cold on the high lands was intense. When 
in warm weather the ice and snow melted, the stones were 
brought down to lower positions, and it was on these lower 
positions that the primaeval men chiefly found the flints and 
manufactured them into tools. The chalk whence the flints 
were derived was no doubt that which crops up in the chalk 
hills of Hertfordshire, for the Lea rises near Dunstable, in 
South Bedfordshire, in a position surrounded by chalk-hills, 
some capped with glacial gravels. 
The Lea receives the waters of the Stort from the east, 
near Hoddesdon; the Stort itself rises six miles direct south¬ 
west from Boyston. Mr. John Evans records the finding of 
two Palaeolithic implements in the Valley of the Stort, one 
from Bishop’s Stortford, and the other two miles further to 
the north, from Pesterford Bridge. 
That the land was continuous in Palaeolithic times over 
the Straits of Dover and the Solent Sea seems proved by 
the stratification of the rocks, which agrees on both sides. 
The implement-bearing gravels are also in some places con¬ 
tinuous, and as a consequence the gravelly beaches of our 
Kentish and Hampshire coasts are all implementiferous. 
Every geologist is acquainted with the beautiful Palaeolithic 
instruments found on the beach near Reculver and Herne 
Bay, some of which are exhibited in the Geological Museum 
in Jermyn Street. I have a considerable number in my own 
