PnmcBval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 115 
and no doubt the time will some day arrive when human bones 
will be found, and we shall be able to build up human 
skeletons of Palaeolithic age. It frequently happens that the 
remains of small bones are found, but in so decayed and 
friable a state that it is impossible to identify or preserve them, 
or even remove them from the wet sand. When human bodies 
are once buried in a stony place where water is able to 
filter through, as in the Lea-gravels, such bodies probably 
soon utterly perish. As an illustration of a fact of this class 
I may say that about four years ago I had an opportunity of 
opening several cairns on the mountain-tops of Central Wales. 
After the nodular covering-stones forming the cairns were 
removed, the Kist Yaens or rude stone coffins were exposed. 
On removing the heavy slabs of stone from these coffins, a 
bed of fine clay was exposed at the bottom, on which the dead 
bodies had been laid in a contracted position, i.e., with the 
knees (drawn up to the chin, and the body laid in the grave 
sideways. The bed of clay was perfectly clean and pure in 
colour, but there was no trace whatever of the body in any of 
the cairns—every vestige had disappeared. These Kists may 
be two thousand years old—a very small item in the pro¬ 
bable age of the river-terraces of the Lea. 
No animal can live long unless water is accessible; there¬ 
fore in Palaeolithic times, as now, the men found it convenient 
to live near the water; the Mammoth, the Reindeer, the 
Rhinoceros, the Bison, the Lion, the Horse, and other 
animals also frequented the river-margins for drink. It was 
on the river-margins that the men chiefly hunted these beasts 
with their weapons of stone, the bones and tusks of the animals 
being left where we now find them, amongst the constituent 
stones of the gravel. I have many times seen such tender 
things as leaves, small pieces of wood and small crushed 
branches, generally, especially is this the case with the 
leaves, very friable. Molluscan remains in immediate con¬ 
tact with the “floor” sometimes occur, and I have seen 
them both below and above it, and in contact with the bones 
and implements. Three or four feet below the “floor,” 
shells are sometimes very common. Both under and above 
