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RIVER-DRIFT IMPLEMENTS.
[CHAP. XXIII.

At Biggleswade, farther down the valley of the Ivel, a few palæolithic implements have been procured from the railway ballast-pit.

Northwards of Hitchin a flint flake has been found in the gravel of the Ouse at Hartford,[1] near Huntingdon, together with remains of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros tichorhinus. I have also a well-shaped ochreous pointed implement (5 inches) found at Abbot's Ripton, 31/2 miles north of Huntingdon, in 1896, as well as one like Fig. 457 (53/4 inches) from gravel at Chatteris, Cambs.

Proceeding eastward, the next important affluent of the Ouse which is met with, is the Cam, the gravels along the valley of which present in various places characters analogous with those near Bedford. Numerous mammalian remains of the same Quaternary fauna have been found along its course, especially at Barnwell and Chesterton,[2] near Cambridge, where also land and freshwater shells occur in abundance. I have also found them in a pit near Littlebury, a few miles from Saffron Walden.

From Quendon, Essex, about 5 miles south of Saffron Walden, and in the valley of the Cam, Mr. C. K. Probert, of Newport, Bishop Stortford, obtained a magnificent sharp-pointed implement with the sides curved outwards, 8 inches in length. It lay in sandy drift in a pit about 12 feet deep.

In the publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society[3] is a paper by the late Prof. Chas. C. Babington, F.R.S., "On a flint hammer found near Burwell." It is described as a pointed implement, very similar to those found at Hoxne and Amiens, as represented in Phil. Trans., 1860, Pl. XIV., 6 and 8. It was not found in situ, nor in gravel, but is said to have come from a mill used for cleaning coprolites, where it had been well washed with them. If it be the specimen that I have seen in the museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, I fear it is a forgery. Another worked flint, also of rather uncertain origin, but perfectly genuine, and having all the characteristics of belonging to the River-drift, was found in 1862 on a heap of gravel, near Cambridge, by Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., who kindly placed it in my collection. It is a thick polygonal flake, about 3 inches long and 1 inch broad at the base, tapering to the point, which is broken off. Its surface is stained all over of a deep ochreous colour, its angles are slightly water-worn, and the edges worn away, either by friction among other stones in the gravel, or by use. In the Woodwardian Museum is another flake, apparently of palæolithic date, which was found in gravel near the Cambridge Observatory. The Rev. Osmond Fisher, F.G.S., possesses an implement in form and character much like Fig. 470, from Highfield, Salisbury, which was found on a heap of gravel brought from Chesterton. Other discoveries have confirmed this evidence of the presence of palæolithic implements in the gravels of the valley of the Cam.

Mr. A. F. Griffith[4] in 1878 described a fine implement from the Barnwell gravels (63/4 inches) in form and size almost identical with
  1. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. v. p. 35.
  2. Seeley, Quar. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1866), vol. xxii. p. 475.
  3. Antiquarian Comm., vol. ii. p. 201.
  4. Geol. Mag., 2nd Decade, vol. v. (1878), p. 400. See also Camb. Ant. Comm., vol. iv. p. 177, where the specimens are figured.