130 Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea.
a white bark of a sixteenth of an inch in thickness. How
much older, then, must this Palaeolithic implement be than
the Neolithic flints from the same place. There is other
evidence of the extreme antiquity of these things. They
are all beneath the "trail" and "warp." Now the "trail"
belongs to geological time, and the period of its deposition
is so remote that one can only guess at its age in years.
The newest Palaeolithic implements are every one beneath
and older than the "trail"; how very much older, then,
must be the oldest implements. The proofs that they are
really older I have given.
The tools of the later Palaeolithic period show a marked
development of the hand in the makers, for the chippers of
these later tools had learned to hold small instruments with
the fingers—much as we now hold a small pen, pencil, or
knife. From the rude and heavy bludgeon the men had
advanced to beautiful oval and ovate forms, almost perfect in
geometrical precision. The progress from the large and
rude, to the extremely small and neat scraper, shows that
the men had probably progressed in the art of dressing skins,
and in every way did finer and neater things. That these
men and women now wore necklaces, and possibly bracelets,
seems proved by the fact of specimens of Coscinopora globularis,
D'Orb., occurring with the natural orifice artificially enlarged.
I have several specimens thus enlarged from a hoard of more
than two hundred examples found together near Bedford.
Mr. James Wyatt, F.G.S., noticed a similar fact, as recorded
by him in the 'Geologist' for 1862, p. 234. These later
Palaeolithic men lived in large and probably peaceful com-
panies, and their living-places stretched in unbroken lines
on the old river-banks. The "Palaeolithic Floors" are not
little isolated patches, but places extending for many miles ;
how large they are it is impossible to say, from paucity of
excavations. They are not confined to the Valley of the
Thames, but occur in many places.
The newer implements and those of middle age are innate
with, and have belonged to, the gravel from the first. The
older implements are distinctly "derived," like the cretaceous