lithic type, are said to have been discovered in beds of sand near Megalopolis,[1] with bones of the great pachyderms.
Returning to this country and to the year 1859, I may observe that it turned out on examination that more than one such discovery as those of Abbeville and Amiens had already been recorded, and that flint implements of similar types to the French had been found in the gravels of London at the close of the seventeenth century, and in the brick-earth of Hoxne, in Suffolk, at the close of the eighteenth, and were still preserved in the British Museum, and in that of the Society of Antiquaries.
During the thirty-eight years that have elapsed since renewed and careful attention was called to these implements, numerous other discoveries have taken place in various parts of England of instruments of analogous forms in beds of gravel, sand, and clay, for the most part on the slopes of our existing river valleys, though in some instances at considerable distances from any stream of water, and occasionally not thus embedded, but lying on the surface of the ground. Several of these discoveries have been made in localities where, from the nature of the deposits, it had already been suggested by the late Sir Joseph Prestwich and myself that implements would probably be found; and others have resulted from workmen, who had been trained to search for the implements in gravel, having migrated to new pits, where also their search has proved successful. In not a few instances the researches for such evidence of the antiquity of man have been carried on by fully qualified observers. It is, however, needless here to trace the causes and order of the discoveries, and I therefore propose to treat them in geographical, and not chronological, sequence. In so doing it will be most convenient to arrange them in accordance with the river systems in connection with which the gravels were deposited, wherein for the most part the implements have been found.
