38 PRIMAEVAL MAN IN THE VALLEY OF THE LEA.
obvious connection with any river, I have found two Palaeolithic flakes,
one a good example.
Before concluding, I must mention a remarkable discovery at
Round Green, a mile to the north of Luton and less than three miles
from the source of the Lea. At this place there is a deep pit where
a kind of clay or brick earth is dug for brick making; the clay is
overlaid with the common gravelly glacial debris of the district,
derived from the glacial gravels on the surrounding hills. Now, some
twenty feet below the surface in this pit, there is a thin stratum of
flints containing fossil bones. I have only visited the pit once, and
then only for a short time, but I secured, in addition to bones, a
piece of fossil antler of red deer, and a small unabraded flint flake ;
the flake was not in situ, but at the bottom of the pit with pieces
of fossil bone; the flake has every appearance of being Palaeolithic,
for it is stained with the peculiar matrix of the stratum in which
the fossil bones occur.
I have at present had no opportunity for making sections, or,
in fact, for properly studying the geology of the Lea valley near here.
It is remarkable in many ways, and I may possibly attempt some-
thing during the forthcoming summer.
For the last two years I have almost daily walked over the glacial
gravels on the hill-tops near Dunstable. During these walks I have
always had an eye ready for any Palaeolithic relics, but I have never
met with a single stone with a trace of the handiwork of Palaeolithic
man upon it. I have, however, picked up one piece of fossil antler.
Neolithic relics are frequent all over the north Hertford and south
Bedford district. The first time I visited Leagrave (since my
residence here), a man was clearing the bed at the actual source of
the Lea, and he threw at my feet, from the bed of the stream, a
globular Neolithic hammer-stone about the size of a cricket-ball.
The first time I went to Wheathampstead was after a shower of rain,
and a labourer had just dug a little shallow trench by the road-side
to take off the rain from the road. In the shovel or two of earth
taken out by this man were two unpolished Neolithic celts. The
labourer laid them in a shallow rut by the road side as a small instal-
ment of road metal; it was fortunate that I was upon the spot to
save them from destruction.
"Withambury."—In Mr. Spurrell's paper on Withambury, in the January
number, page 20, there is an error in the name of the river which runs by the
camp. This stream is Pod's Brook, a tributary of the Pant or Blackwater, which
it joins about a mile from the camp.