122 Primceval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 
three distinct ages are not confined to the valley of the Lea 
or the Thames, as they are met with at Canterbury, Bedford, 
Southampton, and elsewhere. 
In looking for the oldest human work it would be un¬ 
reasonable to expect symmetrical implements. The very 
earliest weapons and tools used by our most remote precursors 
must have been natural or accidentally broken stones— 
naturally pointed stones, and stones with a naturally suitable 
cutting or chopping edge; the first attempts at implement¬ 
making must have been at the time when the primaeval 
savages ‘‘quartered” a stone by smashing it, and then selected 
pointed and knife-like pieces of this stone for tools. 
None of the following rules are without exceptions, for 
amongst the implements, which are usually very large, a 
very small specimen may now and then occur ; and amongst 
those which are usually very small there may be at times a 
large example. The lustre and deep ochreous tints may at 
times vary a little. Notwithstanding exceptions, when all 
the characters are taken together, the distinctness of the 
three classes will hold good. 
The oldest known tools, then, are found at the base of the 
20 and 80 ft. excavations; they' can, according to my esti¬ 
mate, be recognised by the following characters :—they are 
generally Ungulate, or club-shaped, with a heavy butt, 
often rudely ovate, never sharply acuminate, generally large 
and very rude, frequently with a thick, ochreous crust, and 
always greatly abraded, as if they had been tossed about for 
ages in the sea. Some of these implements are so much 
abraded that they have lost almost every trace of flaking. 
These old implements acquired their ochreous crust before 
they were buried in the gravel, as they occur amongst sub- 
angular lustrous flints, and, though of flint, they also occur 
in chert gravel, where only the implements and a few stray 
stones exhibit the ochreous crust. I have seen no trimmed 
flakes or scraping tools belonging to this older age. At 
Canterbury they occur in thin seams of distinct ochreous 
material, where all the contained flints have an ochreous 
surface. All these older tools were made at a long distance 
