110 Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea.
month (March, 1882) dug out, with implements, at Stamford
Hill; it measured 1 ft. 5 in. by 1 ft. 4 in. by 9 in.; another
from Stoke Newington measured 1 ft. 6 in. by 1 ft. by 1 ft.;
I also have a record of a block of quartz at Shacklewell
1 ft. 2 in. in diameter. At Hackney I have seen sandstone
blocks weighing 2, 3, 4, and even 5 cwt. each excavated
from the gravel; these were probably carried down the old
stream on blocks of ice; some exhibit glacial strife. The
flints now found in the gravels at one time belonged to the
chalk; they were probably set free soon after the chalk
emerged from the sea by water dissolving away the chalky
matrix. Glaciers and blocks of ice then moved the stones south-
wards. The land at that time was many feet higher than now,
and consequently the cold on the high lands was intense. When
in warm weather the ice and snow melted, the stones were
brought down to lower positions, and it was on these lower
positions that the primaeval men chiefly found the flints and
manufactured them into tools. The chalk whence the flints
were derived was no doubt that which crops up in the chalk
hills of Hertfordshire, for the Lea rises near Dunstable, in
South Bedfordshire, in a position surrounded by chalk-hills,
some capped with glacial gravels.
The Lea receives the waters of the Stort from the east,
near Hoddesdon; the Stort itself rises six miles direct south-
west from Royston. Mr. John Evans records the finding of
two Palaeolithic implements in the Valley of the Stort, one
from Bishop's Stortford, and the other two miles further to
the north, from Pesterford Bridge.
That the land was continuous in Palaeolithic times over
the Straits of Dover and the Solent Sea seems proved by
the stratification of the rocks, which agrees on both sides.
The implement-bearing gravels are also in some places con-
tinuous, and as a consequence the gravelly beaches of our
Kentish and Hampshire coasts are all implementiferous.
Every geologist is acquainted with the beautiful Palaeolithic
instruments found on the beach near Reculver and Herne
Bay, some of which are exhibited in the Geological Museum
in Jermyn Street. I have a considerable number in my own