EXCURSION TO WALTON AND FRINTON. 217
" I heartily endorse my friend Kennard's remarks as to the necessity of
employing caution in interpreting the uses of these primitive implements. I
do not however believe that the possibility of discovering their purpose is
quite so hopeless as he seems to think. If we can trace the evolution of any
of these implements from the earliest to the latest periods of the Stone Age we
may yet do so, and such an evolution is, in my opinion, clearly observable in
the spokeshave—scraper group, the latter implement even having been
observed in use among modern savages. Now if we could connect the scraper
of the Eskimo and that of the Eolithic folk with an intermediate series of
intermediate age, would we not be justified in assuming that the use was the
same ? It is certainly unlikely that any radical change would take place in
the use of a particular type of implement.
" However it has not been my intention to dogmatise in my explan-
ation of the uses of these implements, but rather to suggest. It is necessary
in a general and introductory paper of this description to give an idea of the
most probable way in which they would have been used, and that is all that
I have done.
J. P. Johnson."
WALTON AND FRINTON, ESSEX, IN 1902.
REPORT OF THE EXCURSION OF THE CLUB, 7th JUNE,
1902.
By W. H. DALTON, F.G.S., Hon. Memb., E.F.C.
The cliff-section of Walton-Naze has been often described,
the richly-fossiliferous sands of the Red Crag having constituted
it one of the "happy hunting grounds" of the collector for more
than half a century. Though but a few feet thick, it has been so
assiduously searched that a very large proportion of the fauna of
the Crag period has been found represented here. This is partly
due to the way in which the shells are protected from the solvent
action of percolating water by a thick bed of clay, capped in its
turn with several feet of gravel, and partly to its slight coherence
in comparison with that of the subjacent London-clay. This
may sound paradoxical, in view of the direct object of the
excursion, the study of the progressive degradation of the
London-clay itself. But it is merely a question of relative coher-
ence—loose sand above stiff clay—and the result is the forma-
tion of a sort of shelf of the clay, from which rises a second and
steeper cliff, 15 or 20 yards inland of that which descends to the
beach. The shelf is much modified by slipping, and by the
erosion of channels for the escape of springs from the interior,