Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 131
fossils commonly found in the gravel. We know whence the
fossils have come, because they are so common; the abraded
ochreous implements, on the other hand, are very rare, and
this rarity makes it difficult to say whence they have been
derived; they belong to none of the existing rivers. As
in 18G8 ('Journal of Anthropological Institute,' Feb., 1879)
I recorded my discovery of flakes and implements in the so-
called middle glacial gravel of Amwell, Ware, and Hertford,
I have little doubt that the older implements have been
derived from these positions. Whether the above-mentioned
gravels are really glacial or not I am not prepared to decide.
How the implements got into the gravel I cannot say. I
found them in the ballast thrown out of the pits, and in the
pits themselves. If the gravel is glacial, could not glaciers
have swept up flakes and tools from old surfaces in the same
way as the "trail" has undoubtedly done?
Great caution must be exercised in the acceptance of
implements as of glacial age, even if found on the surface of
glacial gravels. Men of the later Palaeolithic age lived only
seven miles south of Ware, and there is no reason why they
should not have strayed over those high positions. In fact
I believe the Palaeolithic men who once lived where the
district from Stoke Newington Common to Cheshunt now is,
actually did walk over the exposed high gravels of Hertford
and Ware, and any implements found on the top of those
gravels, instead of proving man to be pre-glacial, would only
prove that the most recent post-glacial men strayed over that
surface. Implements in two conditions have been met with
at Hertford and Ware, one sharp and unabraded, left by the
"Palaeolithic Floor" men on the surface, others greatly
abraded and found in the body of the gravel. Some of the
Lea Valley tools show glacial strife on the original crust, but
never on the worked portions.
There is apparently, but perhaps not really, a gap between
each of these three Palaeolithic periods, as there is apparently
a gap between Palaeolithic (in its vague general sense)
and Neolithic times. Each older period, however, has
forms foreshadowing those which follow in succeeding