Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/584

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RIVER-DRIFT IMPLEMENTS.
[CHAP. XXIII.

however, much more convex on one face than on the other, and presents what are apparently signs of wear along both the sides and the ends, the broader of which is somewhat gouge-like in character.


Fig. 438.—Bromehill, Brandon. 1/2

In addition to the pit in the bluff facing the river, there is another in the same gravel, but on the other side of the railway, which has been here cut through the Drift deposits. In this also implements have been found.

The next locality to be mentioned is on the Suffolk side of the river, about two miles S.W. of Brandon Station. This spot has already been described by Mr. Flower,[1] under the name of Gravel Hill, Brandon; it is also known as Brandon Down, or Brandon Field; and from the contiguity of one of the pits to Brick-kiln Farm, Wangford, some specimens from this place have been labelled as found at Wangford.

The gravel is worked on both sides of the point of a high ridge of land, nearly at right angles to the course of the river, and about a mile distant from it. The summit of the ridge between two of the pits was found by Mr. Flower to be 91 feet above the level of the river at its nearest point. The surface of the ground where gravel has been dug is lower only by a few feet, and the beds possibly extend through the ridge. Between the ridge and the higher land to the S.W. a valley intervenes, along which the road to Mildenhall passes, so that the hill on which the gravel reposes is isolated. The gravel is usually not more than 10 feet in thickness, but often less, and it rests in some places immediately on the chalk. It contains a very large proportion of quartzite pebbles from the New Red Conglomerate, in some spots more than 50 per cent. of the whole, as well as fragments of jasper, clay-slate, quartz, greenstone and limestone; all derived from Glacial Beds, from which also many of the flints appear to have come. The matrix is of coarse red sand, and there is usually some thickness of sand above the gravel. In some few places there are beds formed almost exclusively of the quartzite pebbles; but Mr. Flower's estimate of their forming three fourths of the whole mass of gravel is, I believe, very far in excess.

Flint implements have been found here in considerable numbers—at all events, many hundreds. I have myself found several, and many flakes, but all in gravel already dug and not in situ. They appear to occur at all depths; but, as usual, for the most part, near
  1. Quar. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1869), vol. xxv. p. 449.