I have the pleasure to submit for your information some conclusions which I have arrived at after two years' work among the flints of Hampshire, in a district contained between the Meon, West Sussex, and the south of the Isle of Wight. The point I wish to urge is that in very great probability the earliest pages of the History of the Stone Age will be found written, not in pits of transported gravel but at the fountain head and parent source of these gravels—the Clay with Flints of the chalk downs. That has been my hypothesis, and as I went along I found things fitting into it. I feel convinced that Professor Prestwich had some such idea when he recommended Mr. Benjamin Harrison to devote his attention to the flints of the North Downs at their highest points.

I would ask you to undertake a flight of imagination and to place yourselves in some modern aerial contrivance a few hundred feet above Alton in Hampshire, and to survey the horizon north, south and west. You will find below you the western extremity of the Wealden Pericline in the form of a truncated cone fading away to the horizon of Tertiaries which once wrapped round and spread over it, but which now have shrunk away to form the London and Hampshire Basins north and south of the Pericline. What was once a deposit of Reading Beds became in Eo., Mio, Plio. and Pleistocene time a smear of Remanié over the entire surface, before the excavation of the chalk valleys, a residue which we call Clay with Flints, and which is known in France as the Argile à Silex.

M. Rutot has pointed out that in the centre and south of France all the Palæolithic industries since the Chellean, and up to and including implements of the Neolithic period, lie intermingled on the surface, and in the last part of our “Proceedings” Dr. Sturge has given cogent reasons for considering some of our surface implements in East Anglia to be late Palæolithic, of “cave” types. Mr. Reginald Smith, F.S.A., has also adopted this view, and elaborated it by allotting the well-defined “Cissbury type” implements to the Aurignacian period. In looking through some thousands of Norfolk implements I have been struck by the scarcity—omitting the “Cissbury” specimens—of the types described as resembling those from the French caves, and by their much greater frequency in South-West Norfolk than in other parts of the county, though this applies to practically every industry, and is probably due to a variety of causes, geological and otherwise.

I think all agree that arrow tips would first have been made of (a) hard wood or bone ground to a sharp point (as used to-day in East Africa), later by (b) sharp-pointed unworked splinters or flakes of stone or flint, followed by (c) flakes worked diagonally at one end to a sharp point, and the other end inserted in the arrow shaft.

As the worker's skill improved, these worked flake arrow tips would be superseded by (d) the beautifully flaked barbed and leaf arrows of the Neolithic and Bronze periods.

The whole prehistoric world would obviously not have been at any one time in the same stage of culture. At all periods, and in all districts, tribes would have existed side by side in various stages of culture, the work of the “᾽prentice” hand alongside that of the “master worker.”

It is therefore highly dangerous to assign an age to a worked flint solely by roughness of workmanship.

This communication is to record a prehistoric workshop site at Two-Mile-Bottom Common, near Thetford, Norfolk, containing worked flake tools of a very definite culture.

The series exhibited by Mr. Vachell not only contains some specimens of peculiar interest, but teaches a lesson that will not be lost on prehistorians at the present time. The Downs behind Folkestone are, like most of the chalk area in the South-East of England, very rich in worked flints, though probably no richer than many other localities with the same formation; but surface finds are in the nature of things miscellaneous, and collectors are often at a loss to classify what they pick up in the open. For this deadlock the text-books are largely to blame, for if they do not actually state that surface-finds are Neolithic, they imply that such is the case; and confidence in form is considerably shaken when ovate implements, identical in all but colour with gravel specimens, are attributed to the later Stone Age merely on account of their position. Some authors have protested, but the superstition is still rife, and another object-lesson will not be superfluous.

On the Manor Farm, Heacham, Norfolk, there are seven long mounds (one was removed some years ago), roughly parallel and running east and west. They are in a meadow adjoining the road from Heacham to Hunstanton on the west. Ditches border the field east and west, and north of the mounds is a raised roadway connecting the highway to Hunstanton with a farm road. The western half of this meadow (79 yards from east to west) has been hollowed out in irregular shape. The longest mound is 33 yards long; they average 6 yards in width, and 17 yards from the top of one mound to the top of the next.

By permission of Mr. Hamon le Strange, the landowner, and Mr. G. B. M. Brown, the tenant, Mr. Bellerby Lowerison made some excavations in these mounds in January, 1913. The results noted by Mr. Lowerison were as follows:—

“27, 1, '13.—Made longitudinal section in 5th mound from north (not counting road-mound), 7 yds. long, 4 ft. wide. Strata as follow:—1, humus, 6 inches; 2, yellow loam, 2 ft.; 3, clayey loam, 2 ft.; 4, whitey grey clay, 3 inches ; 5, yellow loam like (2), 2 ft.; 6, grey sandy clay (boulder?), 9 inches.

The fullest credit must be given to our members, Mr. Reid Moir, F.G.S., and Mr. S. Hazzledine Warren, F.G.S. (and others also) for their efforts to solve this problem by experiment. This is obviously the right line to adopt, but, after all, experiments (including my own, for I have been experimenting for years on similar lines) are only proof that (given suitable conditions) the sharp edges of split flints will chip under “Force,” whether this is applied by Nature or Man. Experiments can prove the difference between the results of the forces of “Percussion” and “Pressure”: but it is doubtful, in my opinion, if it can be proved by experiments whether Nature or Man has applied the force, as the same forces are used by both Nature and Man, the only difference being the intensity with which the force has been used and the way that force has been applied.

A few years ago Mr. R. J. W. Purdy, of Foulsham, who is one of our most observant local antiquaries (and to whom is also due the investigation of the very interesting moated mound at Burgh-by-Aylsham), informed me that there was a road called by some a Roman road, and still traceable from East Gate corner at Cawston across the main Norwich and Holt road, about half-a-mile south of the tenth milestone from Norwich, which is about 440 yards from the Woodrow Inn, and then runs across the fields to a little south of the Botany Bay farmhouse, and at an angle across Marsham Heath and the Burnt Plantation practically to Allison Street, and so across the Cromer road through the grounds of the Old Rectory, now known as Marsham Hall. I must own to having been sceptical at first, but after several visits, and after the ground of the Burnt Plantation had been opened in several places, through the kindness of Mr. Wood, the owner, I can no longer doubt that a perfectly straight road or trackway could be traced for a trifle over a mile (shown by double lines on Fig. 19). It only consists of a slight layer of gravel and stones over the natural peaty soil, but it does exist and is very marked, and the portion of it over the field opposite Botany Bay, looking towards Booton, stood up till last year quite clearly from the soil of the field, and the colour of the corn, etc., grown over it was distinctly different from that of the main crop in the field. At sunset, too, one could see the little ridge quite clearly, though it is fast being ploughed away.

The discovery with which this paper deals was made by me in August, 1908. In the early part of that month, while walking in Upper Dovercourt, I noticed a gravel pit being excavated in a field overlooking the Stour Valley, and thinking it was a likely spot to find river drift implements, I interviewed the workmen, and found that though they knew nothing of humanly-flaked flints, they had noticed and preserved a number of bones, which, however, had unfortunately been sold to a local rag and bone merchant. The occurrence of these bones made me feel confident that flint implements must be associated with them; so I took a representative series of Palæolithic implements for the men to see, and explained to them that it was such things I wanted them to look for. I also took the opportunity of examining the stone heaps in the pit, and was fortunate enough to discover two Moustier-like implements, which, though of no great importance, confirmed me in my opinion as to the implementiferous nature of the gravel bed.

The implements shown were found in Heacham Park while digging an ornamental lake in February, 1914. The tanged and barbed arrow-head of ruddy-brown flint, not lustrous, 1¾ in, long and ⅝ in. wide at the barbs, was found within a foot of the surface just below the turf. The others (Aurignacian, according to Mr. Reginald Smith) range in colour from blue-black to cream, and include a cream scraper, 2½ in. by 1½ in.; a flake, 4¾ in. by 1¼ in.; and an implement with traces of fire (Plate CXXII.).

The section was as follows:—(1) 7–8 in brown peaty earth with roots, and at base chalky concretions of marl, scaling; 1 in. in diameter and less (brown arrpw-head here). This, graduates through (la) 2 in. a grey marly earth or clay, to (2) 8-in. white chalky clay, granular to sight after passage of spade, yet clayey to touch.

The discovery to which this paper refers was made by a series of very fortunate circumstances. A resident in Ivry Street, in the northern portion of Ipswich, was having an inspection pit sunk for his motor car, and during the excavation his gardener, who is familiar with humanly-worked flints, found a number of long flakes at a depth of about three feet from the surface of the ground. These he fortunately preserved and gave to my workman Baxter; who brought them to me.

I at once paid a visit to the site and, owing to the kindness of Mr. Makepeace, the occupant of the house in Ivry Street, was enabled to conduct a series of excavations and to find the various specimens which it is my purpose to describe.

In the second part of our Proceedings, I was able to give an account of various experiments with flints under natural percussion and pressure, and to show wherein the fractures produced by these means differ from those resulting from human blows. This paper, which was an accumulation of concrete facts, was written with a view to dispelling in some measure the atmosphere of uncertainty which for so many years had surrounded the important subject of the greater antiquity of man.

I now propose to supplement, as it were, the results obtained by my experiments by replying to the various objections which have been raised as to the “humanity” of the pre-Palæolithic implements I have discovered, and to show why in my opinion these objections are by no means insurmountable. I intend to confine myself to a defence of the implements found in my own particular district, because after several years' continual study of these specimens, and the beds in which they occur, I feel able to speak with some amount of confidence about them.

The discovery of late Palæolithic relics in East Anglia has aroused the interest of students of prehistoric remains, and the paper by Dr. A. Sturge in Vol. I., Part II., of the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia may be regarded as the starting-point from which much will be done in the near future.

I have for some time held on theoretical grounds that Late Palæolithic relics should occur in East Anglia, and collected specimens from Wretham Heath in support of that view: it was, therefore, with peculiar interest that I learned of Dr. Sturge's discoveries. I wish to thank Dr. Sturge and the Abbé Breuil for their kindness in examining my specimens, and Mr. W. B. R. King, B.A., of Jesus College, Cambridge, for much help in collecting.

In continuation of my former review of advances made in recent years in the science of palethnology, it seems to me that, in view of the rapidity with which our knowledge of this subject has increased during the last eighteen months or so, it will be opportune and acceptable to once more put before prehistorians a summary of this newly-acquired knowledge, and to point out the great interest and importance of the discoveries which have made that knowledge possible.

I must confess to a certain amount of satisfaction in recognising that some of the forecasts of future, discoveries which I foreshadowed in my former article have in some measure been fulfilled, while some of the lines of research which I suggested might be followed up have been investigated and are in process of partial solution. One of the most important of these, the investigation into the causes and meaning of the “patination” of flint, was worked at by the late Dr. Canton, of Ipswich, who carried through a series of highly interesting experiments in which flints were subjected to the action of various solvents, and it is my hope that some account of this work will be laid before the scientific world in the near future.