In an arid district like Breckland, the vicinity of the meres, which provided a water-supply, fish, fowl and molluscs, remote from river-valleys, was eminently suitable for settlements of prehistoric man. Pile-dwellings have been found in two of the Wretham Park meres, and there are evidences of settlements on a small plateau on the east shore of Fowlmere, a similar plateau on the north-east bank of Langmere, and the north and south shores of Ringmere. The bed of Langmere confirms the evidence of an important settlement. The southern portion contains quantities of pot-boilers and a bank projecting into the mere from the south-west corner of the island seems to be chiefly made of pot-boilers. Many flakes, of types and patinas similar to those recorded hereafter, are also found in the bed of Langmere, and on its shores. Flakes and pot-boilers have also been found near most of the other meres, and Dr. Marr has described (Proc. Vol. I., p. 374) “A Late Palæolithic Site on Wretham Heath,” east of Langmere.

Further excavations on Floor 85, at the end of July, 1922, increased the total area of this important floor, carefully dug over and examined, to 109 square yards. Previous observations have been confirmed and a further series of implements recovered, including engraved pieces of flint crust and pieces bearing incised lines, similar in character, though of minor importance, to those described in the “Proceedings,” Vol. 3, p. 434 and 548.

Dr. R. V. Favell again co-operated and the work was principally concentrated upon the S., SE., and E. sides of the previous excavation.

Upon the S. side Floor A was absent, Floors B and C well marked, though Floor C proved to be thin in places and towards the termination of the dig showed signs of giving out, whereas Floor B was becoming thicker. The sterile layer separating B from C, latterly became so thin that the B floor in places was resting immediately upon the red sand layer and almost indistinguishable from Floor C, except by the most careful observation.

In January, 1912, Mr. Reginald Smith read a paper before the Society of Antiquaries entitled “Flint Implements of Special Interest,” in which figured an implement of the Thames pick type— the author relegating it to the palæolithic period. I will read an extract from this paper describing the “pick.”

“The implement in question was found during the War by the late Captain Harvey Webb while searching the coastal gravel near Netley Hospital. It is a flint rod of roughly triangular section, with one face chipped flat; one end is nosed with bold fluting, the other is crusted and therefore, not functional. The whole is patinated an ochreus colour and the ridges are much battered by rolling.

Length 6 inches—the flat face 2 inches across. It was submitted to the British Museum in November, 1916, with other (obviously palæolithic) specimens from the same deposits: a large pear-shaped hand-axe with brown patina; a white St. Acheul ovate much rolled; a cordate brown St. Acheul implement; unrolled; a pointed triangular hand-axe; and a brown chert ovate, this last being from the top of the loam beneath the gravel.”

The history of early man in Uganda is bound up with that of the inland sea now familiar to Europeans as Lake Victoria or the Victoria Nyanza. The area of this great lake is given as 26,828 square miles (Handbook of Uganda, Ed. II., 1920, p. 26), or about the size of Scotland, but its maximum depth is probably some-what less than the height above ground of the cross of St. Paul's Cathedral. Lake Victoria, then, is just a gigantic puddle.

The history of the Lake is a long one. Beginning as a natural sump, as it probably did in Miocene times, it reached its maximum, in all probability, in the Pliocene, when its area was doubtless quite double that ot its present surface, while its depth was at least four times as great as that now registered.

It is remarkable that so few attempts have been made to illustrate continuity of settlement on a given site through successive culture phases in East Anglia. No more valuable study could be undertaken by any field archæologist, than the careful examination of successive deposits on such a site. Especially useful would be the analysis of the transitional phases, showing the extent to which the art and craft-workers of one period influenced the technique and style of their successors and descendants; such a study should also throw light on the material, social and economic effects on the peasantry of the district of invasion and conquest, an evil from which East Anglia seems to have suffered every 500 years or so from about 1000 B.C. onwards. I cannot offer you, first hand, such a study; but it may be worth while, as an approach to the ideal, to illustrate a collection of objects from a settlement which seems to have been occupied during three (or four) culture phases for a total period of some 2,000 years.

The discovery of Floor 85, in 1920, with its definite three period stratification, for the first time demonstrated what some people had long suspected, viz., that the Grimes' Graves industry was not confined to any one period exclusively, but was the outcome of a practically continuous local development from an early stage in the pre-historic period down to the end of Neolithic times, and the exploration of this Floor established three important facts:—

(1) That an early industry had existed on the site characterised by the practice of naturalistic engraving on flint crust and the production of flint implements of certain distinctive types from mined flint of the variety known as Floor-stone.

(2) That that industry was the earliest so far recognised at Grimes' Graves and was clearly not contemporary with any of the 366 visible mine shafts on the site, but ante-dated them so considerably that the implements of the lowest level, F.85c, had become patinated and buried beneath accumulations of humus, etc., before mining operations commenced at that place.

The object of this paper is to draw attention to certain archæological problems which, at the present time, have an important bearing upon the study of prehistoric man in England.

Most archæologists are familiar with the pieces of tabular flint exhibiting human flaking, of a rough and primitive kind, along one or other of their edges, which Benjamin Harrison found, many years ago, in and upon the highest portions of the plateau of Kent. It is my purpose in this note, to discuss the geological, and cultural age of these specimens, and to endeavour to show that they represent the most ancient as well as the most primitive flint implements yet discovered.

Though there is very good reason to suppose that the eoliths of the Kent Plateau (the term “eolith” should be confined solely to these specimens, and to those of the same type found elsewhere), as is the case with others found in similar situations in different parts of the country, are of a great antiquity, it is nevertheless clear that, having not yet been discovered at these places, under any geologically datable deposit, the exact measure of that antiquity remains unknown.