evidence of use upon their edges. A few flakes trimmed at the end into scraper-like form have also been discovered.
At Tempsford, some seven or eight miles below Bedford, the river Ouse is joined by the small river Ivel, a branch of which, the Hiz, rises from the Chalk escarpment near Hitchin, and joins the Ivel at Langford. About two miles south of the junction of these two streams, near Henlow, Bedfordshire, Mr. F. J. Bennett, of the Geological Survey, found in 1868 a flint implement of palæolithic type, not indeed in gravel, but lying on the surface. It is 4 inches long and 212 broad, and of the same general character as that from Icklingham, Fig. 420, but rather more acutely pointed at each end. It is ochreous on one face, and grey black on the other, and not improbably may have been derived from some gravelly bed. I remarked in 1872 that this discovery seemed to place the Ivel and Hiz among the rivers, in the valley-gravels of which, farther search would probably be rewarded.
Since then at Ickleford,[1] near Hitchin, numerous implements, some of them much water-worn, have been found by Mr. Frank Latchmore and others in gravels lying in the valley of the Hiz. I have also an acutely-pointed specimen from Bearton Green,[2] a little to the north of Hitchin, in an angle between the rivers Oughton and Hiz.
But the most important discoveries are those which have been made a short distance to the south of the town of Hitchin. There, near the summit of a hill cut off by valleys on three sides from higher land, a brickfield has been worked for some years by Mr. A. Ransom. Although attention was called to the discovery in 1877,[3] the whole circumstances of the case are only now being thoroughly worked out. At that time the section exposed was about 20 feet in depth, of reddish brick-earth with numerous small angular fragments of flint throughout. In places there were seams in which flints were more abundant. With them were a few quartz and quartzite pebbles. Above one seam, about 9 feet from the surface, was a layer of carbonaceous matter. The implements,[4] which are of various forms, both ovate, like Pl. II., No. 17-19, and pointed, like Pl. I., No. 5-7, are said to occur in the brick-earth, but not in the alluvial beds below. They are mostly ochreous, but some are white. I have a hammer-stone found with them which is made of an almost cylindrical portion of a nodule of flint about 414 inches long, truncated at each end; the edges round both ends are much battered. It was probably used in the manufacture of the other implements; a hammer of the same kind was found at Little Thurrock.[5] In October, 1877, a well was sunk at the bottom of the pit showing—
| ft. | in. | |
(a) Red loam with a few quartz pebbles and flints, about
|
4 | 0 |
(b) White very sandy loam with freshwater shells
|
5 | 6 |
(c) Dark greenish-brown loam with numerous shells and vegetable remains, among them Bythinia, Planorbis and Limnæa; also elytra of beetles, about
|
10 | 6 |
| 20 | 0 |
- ↑ Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. viii., 1896, pl. xi. 6.
- ↑ Trans. Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. viii., 1896, pl. xi. 2.
- ↑ Trans. Watford Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. i. p. lxi. Trans. Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. viii., 1896, pl. xi. 7.
- ↑ Several are figured in Trans. Herts. Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. viii., 1896, pl. xii.
- ↑ "Man the Prim. Savage," p. 261.
