PrimcBval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 147 
must the required time be for the excavation of such a valley. 
Yet before that distant time, man lived close to where London 
now is. As a proof that the levels have not changed in the 
Valley of the Lea since Neolithic times, I exhibit this evening 
three superb wholly-polished flint celts from my own collection 
(now in the collection of Mr. John Evans), fig. 24, found just 
under the alluvium at Temple Mills, near Stratford, a few 
weeks ago. The celts were found side by side and touching 
each other; they could not have got into such a position by 
accident, but were clearly so placed by their Neolithic owner. 
These three exquisitely-made celts, their edges still so keen 
that it is impossible to imagine that they could ever have been 
used, were probably the stock-in-trade of some Neolithic man; 
he carefully placed them on the ground side by side, and never 
returned to re-possess himself of them; the dust and a few 
inches of surface-earth accumulated upon them, and they 
remained on the spot where the former owner laid them down 
at Temple Mills till a week or two ago. 
The Bronze Age is represented in the British Museum at 
Bloomsbury by bronze implements found at Walthamstow ; 
and in the Anthropological Collection of Gen. A. L. Pitt- 
Rivers, now at South Kensington, may be seen numerous 
implements made of bone from the Walthamstow peat. 
When we speak of the Roman Conquest we refer to com¬ 
paratively modern times; relics of that period in coins and 
pottery are frequent in the Valley of the Lea, especially about 
Leyton and Stratford. Saxon, Danish, and Norman an¬ 
tiquities are also commonly met with, and these objects 
foreshadow our own times. 
