Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea. 147
must the required time be for the excavation of such a valley.
Yet before that distant time, man lived close to where London
now is. As a proof that the levels have not changed in the
Valley of the Lea since Neolithic times, I exhibit this evening
three superb wholly-polished flint celts from my own collection
(now in the collection of Mr. John Evans), fig. 24, found just
under the alluvium at Temple Mills, near Stratford, a few
weeks ago. The celts were found side by side and touching
each other; they could not have got into such a position by
accident, but were clearly so placed by their Neolithic owner.
These three exquisitely-made celts, their edges still so keen
that it is impossible to imagine that they could ever have been
used, were probably the stock-in-trade of some Neolithic man;
he carefully placed them on the ground side by side, and never
returned to re-possess himself of them; the dust and a few
inches of surface-earth accumulated upon them, and they
remained on the spot where the former owner laid them down
at Temple Mills till a week or two ago.
The Bronze Age is represented in the British Museum at
Bloomsbury by bronze implements found at Walthamstow ;
and in the Anthropological Collection of Gen. A. L. Pitt-
Rivers, now at South Kensington, may be seen numerous
implements made of bone from the Walthamstow peat.
When we speak of the Roman Conquest we refer to com-
paratively modern times; relics of that period in coins and
pottery are frequent in the Valley of the Lea, especially about
Leyton and Stratford. Saxon, Danish, and Norman an-
tiquities are also commonly met with, and these objects
foreshadow our own times.