The deposits with which I propose to deal in my address are those laid down by the Thames in that part of its course that lies between Maidenhead and the sea.

These deposits rest at three principal levels above mean tide, while a fourth series infills the buried channel of the ancient river.

Perhaps the most completely explored series is that of the so-called 100-ft. terrace at Swanscombe, in Kent. Specimens from the great gravel pit at Milton Street have enriched the collections of amateurs for upwards of fifty years, but they lacked scientific value because their exact provenance was unknown, the collectors being merely desirous of possessing fine specimens. When the value of Palæolithic implements as ‘geological time indicators’ became recognized in France, the demand for more precise information about the English Palæoliths spread among observers on this side of the Channel, and among others, influenced Worthington Smith. His accurate work has not received the acknowledgment it deserves from either geologists or archæologists, but it may be said that in the light of present knowledge it is of outstanding importance. He dealt more with the deposits of the Lea than with those of the main river, but his observations show how fully alive he was to the importance of truly recording the locality and site of each find, and the characteristics of the deposit in which it occurred. In the writer's opinion, Smith's book on “Man, the Primeval Savage” is destined to be recognized as one of the great books on prehistory in the English language.

The discovery of a large hand-axe of the Chelles period in the bed of the river Nidd at Goyden Pot Hole in 1922 has, after eight years careful work, established the fact by the results obtained, that Palæolithıc man lived in Yorkshire from the earliest times. This paper concerns only the upper part of Nidderdale, from Pateley Bridge to the source of the Nidd on Great Whernside. For the privilege of examining this large tract of country my thanks are due to the late Mr. T. E. Yorke, Col. C. J. Huskinson, Mr. H. A. Ramsden, Mr. W. Nicholson, and Mr. L. Mitchell.

As the nature of the country in which the implements have been found is so different from all other sites where implements of the same periods exist in England, a short description of it will not be out of place.

Nidderdale, like all the other Yorkshire dales, has been carved out by the glaciers of the Pleistocene period, and the course which the river follows is the same as that of the glaciers. The Nidd rises in Great Whernside at the height of over 2,000 ft., and by the time it reaches Pateley Bridge, some 15 miles from its source, it is only 383 ft. above sea. The fall of the hills corresponds more or less with this, the top of Great Whernside being 2,310 ft. O.D., and the moors at Pateley Bridge being 1,100-ft. to 1,050 ft. O.D. All down the dale on both sides many streams flow into the river: these have cut out deep narrow valleys, known locally as gills, and in doing so have exposed the lateral moraines which exist there.

The recorded occurrences of Lower Palæolithic implements in the English Midlands are extremely few, and the only specimen hitherto recorded from Warwickshire is a quartzite hand-axe found by the late Mr. Joseph Landon at Saltley, near Birmingham. The object of the present paper is to describe and discuss several artifacts which have been found recently in inter-gjacial gravels at Baginton, a village 2½ miles south of Coventry, and one from fluvioglacial gravels at Kenilworth, five miles south of the same city. In searching the deposits of the districts I have received invaluable assistance from certain members of the Coventry Natural History and Scientific Society—from Mr. J. H. Edwards in particular, and also from Messrs. W. Berry, H. Plumb, P. E. Wilks and J. Wright—and to them I would express my appreciation of their help in a search which, from its very nature, could but seldom be rewarded with success.

In the course of my investigations of the district of Ipswich, Suffolk, I have found a large series of flint implements and other remains of man, ranging in date from the pre-Chellean of the Sub-Red Crag horizon of Pliocene times to the period of the Anglo-Saxons. The majority of these discoveries, so far as those relating to the Stone Age are concerned, were made in the beds forming the plateau, or in the sides of now dry valleys tributary to the main valley of the Gipping. Some little time ago, however, I determined to make—if possible—an examination of the deeply-buried deposits of the Gipping, and this research was later on extended to the tidal portion of the river which is known as the Orwell. It is now my purpose to give an account of this work, which has resulted in the getting together of a great quantity of flint implements, flakes, and cores, mammalian bones in considerable numbers, and some fragmentary portions of the human skeleton. I would here record my thanks to the Percy Sladen Fund, the Royal Society, the Ipswich Dock Commission and their Chief Engineer, Mr. Clarke, Messrs. Warren Livingstone, Ltd., Messrs. Alfred Coe, Ltd., Messrs Packard and James Fison (Thetford), Ltd., Miss Nina Layard, Sir Arthur Keith, F.R.S., Dr. Duckworth, Dr. C. Forster Cooper, Mr. Reginald Smith, the Curator and Mr. F. M. Cullum, of Ipswich Museum, Dr. T. W. Woodhead, Mr. A. S. Barnes, and Dr. G. Erdtman, who have each given invaluable help in one way or another to the prosecution of this research.

In his important Presidential Address, dealing, principally, with the diggings he carried out beneath the Norwich Crag, Mr. J. E. Sainty drew attention to a remarkable flint implement (Fig. 2 of the above-mentioned paper) which was found by Mr. T. F. Newnam in the well-known pit at Whitlingham, near Norwich. After haying shewn that the specimen was derived from the pre-Crag Stone Bed, Mr. Sainty gave a careful and accurate description of this implement, and concluded by stating, “It is altogether a very convincing and highly important specimen from the point of view of dating the industry which it represents.”

There are, I imagine, few archæologists who, having examined this implement, would disagree with Mr. Sainty's opinion. The specimen is, in fact, of such great significance that it was considered desirable to have it illustrated in four views, and this has now been successfully accomplished by Mr. C. O. Waterhouse, of the British Museum. Mr. Sainty has been so good as to ask me to undertake the task of further describing, and of commenting upon, this implement, and I am indebted to the Curator of the Castle Museum, Norwich, where the flint is now preserved, for loaning it to me for examination. If attention is now directed to Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4, it will be at once realised that the specimen found by Mr. Newnam is a coarsely-flaked and massive (it weighs 2¼ lbs.) hand-axe. A further examination will show that the flaking which has shaped the implement has been produced by heavy, though skilful blows delivered by a hammerstone of considerable size and weight. It is clear, also, that the specimen was formed by means of what is known as ‘free’ flaking, in which the side from which the flakes are to be removed is not supported by pressure of the hand, or some other object. The result of the application of the above described technique is the removal of flakes inclined to be thick, and showing prominent bulbs of percussion, and of greater breadth than length.

The most complete section of the glacial series of deposits described and illustrated in Lamplugh's classic paper entitled “On the drifts of Flamborough Head” is that which is located at Danes' Dyke.

Referring to this section Lamplugh says:—

“I have spent much time in exploring this section, and consider that the beds up to this horizon represent the Basement Clay, while the persistent upper band of brown Boulder-clay (3) is all that remains of the upper Clay of Sewerby, this bed and the underlying sand and gravel (3b) together taking the place of the Purple Clays of Bridlington and Holderness. Above this clay lie the Sewerby Gravels (2b), the lower part chalkless and the upper layers composed chiefly of chalk-pebbles, as noticed farther west. A few feet of loamy stuff overlies these gravels at the cliff top (2c), resembling a weathered Boulder-clay, and a little farther east (near Hartindale Gutter) a seam of Boulder-clay certainly appears in these gravels, their contemporaneity with the uppermost part of the Boulder-clay, and consequently their Glacial age, being thus fully established.”

The Rock Shelter situated on the Middle Terrace at Le Moustier was excavated by Lartet and Christy in 1863, and yielded a series of implements of a special culture to which de Mortillet gave the name of Le Moustier. This industry, which to the early prehistorians seemed relatively simple, with the side-scraper and point as its typical implements, has now shown itself to be complex, owing to the discovery of new sites of Le Moustier date, very widely distributed geographically, and to the careful re-examination of the classical site itself. The Abri classique on the Middle Terrace at Le Moustier has been the subject of subsequent excavations by Bourlon, Chastaing, Hauser and Peyrony. The deposits in the Lower Terrace have also been examined by Rivière and Hauser. It was here that in 1908 the latter discovered the skeleton of Neanderthal type now in the Berlin Museum. In 1910 the Rock Shelter on the Middle Terrace, together with the Lower Terrace, was purchased by the French Government, and, subsequent to this, Peyrony has carried out on the Lower Terrace the admirable series of excavations, which he has carefully described in a recent publication. The present paper deals briefly with the morphology of the implements from the various layers as determined by Peyrony, and applies the statistical methods developed by the author to the discrimination of the various layers and the correlation of the implements from the Middle and Lower Terraces.