The gravel-pit in which the implement was found in November, 1929, is known as the Bilford Pit, and is situated about a mile due east of the river Severn, in the Bilford Road, and a mile and a half due north from the centre of Worcester City. The surface level is 100 feet O.D., and the pit is owned and worked by the Worcester Corporation.

The area in the immediate vicinity of Worcester could not have been exempt from some of the effects of the abnormal climate that prevailed over the British Islands during the Ice Age, yet we have at present no clear evidence of an invasion of the district by ice-sheets. The drift deposits around Worcester comprise a great variety of pebbles, beds of sand, and a few boulders. The pebbles are similar to those obtained from the Permian and Bunter conglomerates, and the pebble-beds of the Lickey and Clent district (about sixteen miles to the north of Worcester). They include yellow, brown, and liver-coloured quartzites, vein quartz, sandstone, chert, limestone, slate and various igneous rocks.

The occurence of marine shells, Cretaceous flints, Liassic fossils, and other drift materials in the gravels extending from Cheshire to Gloucestershire, led Murchison to believe they were laid down by a marine current flowing from the north. Few geologists now accept this explanation.

The river gravels of the Boyne Hill (1st., 100 ft. and, in this district, the highest) Terrace of the Thames at Swanscombe (Kent) have yielded flint implements in thousands for many years.

As long ago as 1905 these contemporary (not the derived) implements were correlated with the St. Acheul culture in the Somme Valley, and in 1912 some excavations were undertaken by the Geological Survey and the British Museum to determine the exact horizon at which these implements occur.

These excavations showed conclusively that the level where the implements were so abundant was at the top of the middle gravel. The excavators regarded these middle gravel implements as of “Chelles” type, but recent work has caused the word “Chelles” to be used in a more restricted sense, and they may now be regarded as of St. Acheul type.

The point of the exact determination of the middle gravel implements is important, on account of its bearing upon the age of the industry which occurs in the gravel below the middle gravel.

During the autumn of 1927, Mr. S. Williams, of Murston, observed palæolithic implements in a gravelly deposit underlying the brickearth in the pit which lies west of Haywood Farm, Bapchild. He kept a watch on the site, and, shortly after his first finds had been made, a small quarry was sunk in the bottom of the brickpit. This exposed the sub-brickearth deposits in section, and here Mr. Williams, assisted by Mr. T. Revel and other keen workers, carried out excavations, by permission of the owners of the property, Messrs. Smeed, Dean & Co., Ltd. Their labours were rewarded by a haul of more than four hundred artifacts, of Le Moustier type.

The brickearth dug at Bapchild is placed in a wash-mill and converted to slurry, in which state it is pumped to the brickworks. The wash-mill is periodically cleaned out, and from the accumulation of stones that, at such times, is removed from the mill, a number of flakes of post-Le Moustier form have been found. These obviously came from the brickearth, but none had hitherto been found in situ. Towards the end of 1928 Mr. Williams was joined in his work of implement hunting by Mr. E. A. Mount, of Sittingbourne, whom he advised to give special attention to the brickearth in an endeavour to discover the source of the flakes that had been found in the wash-mill.

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.

Excavations on behalf of the Research Committee for the Archæological Excavation of Derbyshire Caves (British Association and Royal Anthropological Institute) were commenced by the writer in the Pin Hole Cave, Creswell Crags, in September, 1924, at a point 23 feet from the entrance, where the superficial examination of the upper beds by the Rev. Magins Mello had terminated in 1873. The work has steadily progressed, and has now reached 80 feet beyond the datum point, and is proceeding in the large inner chamber which has been revealed by the removal of the deposits which, over half its area, had accumulated to the level of the roof. The section embraces an upper cave-earth from 6 to 7 feet in thickness, mostly sealed beneath stalagmite, or breccia, and containing artifacts ranging in time from Upper Mousterian at its base to Magdalenian at the top. The lower cave-earth, 10 to 11 feet in thickness, contains three lower Palæolithic cultural zones, the lowest of which is 13 feet beneath the floor of the cave.

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.

Since my original paper on the flint implements found in the Brown Boulder Clay of north-west Norfolk, I have continued my researches in that region, and now wish to give some account of these, and of the further specimens which have been discovered in this most recent boulder clay of East Anglia. I would take this opportunity of thanking the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Fund for their kindness in supporting this research with a money grant, and so enabling me to continue my examination of an era of much interest and importance to prehistoric archæology. I am also very grateful to my friends, Mr. J. B. Calkin, Mr. Guy Maynard, and Mr. J. S. Fisher, for the valuable help they have given me in carrying out the investigation of the Brown Boulder Clay.

As is now widely known, this deposit, so far as Norfolk is concerned, is confined to the north-western portion of that county, and many years ago was examined and reported upon by the Geological Survey in two of their memoırs. The Brown Boulder Clay occurs approximately at sea-level at Hunstanton, while at Brancaster, as reported by Mr. Clement Reid, the deposit is exposed at low water upon the foreshore, underlying the ‘submerged forest’ which he saw there. At other places, such as Holkham brickfield, and the remarkable formation (probably a terminal moraine) in Hunstanton Park, the boulder clay rests at about 50 ft, above O.D.

The remains submitted to me by Mr. R. H. Chandler represent three species, Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros, sp., and a deer which for the moment may be determined as Cervus browni. In general character these fossils are quite like those obtained many years ago from the “Shell Pit” in the High Terrace Drift of the Thames at Ingress Vale, near Greenhithe. A full account of the older collection will, I hope, be published before long. The present small collection forms a welcome addition to the relatively scanty material from this horizon, and by the kindness of Mr. A. C. Davis it will be presented to the British Museum.

The study of flint implements has been confined in the past to a consideration of the characteristic features the implements display in virtue of the special uses for which they were designed, and of the methods employed in making them.

The determination of the position which a given series of implements occupies in the accepted hierarchy of industries has therefore been largely a matter for the expert. In making such a determination, the dimensions of the specimens in question have doubtless to be considered, along with the characteristic features to which reference has already been made. This consideration, however, has been of a general character, and the dimensions of the implements as such have not played a formal or precise part in the determination of an industry. Keen and accurate observation and a retentive memory for ‘form’ enable a competent expert to synthesise in his mind the dimensions and the special features of an assemblage of implements. On these he bases his opinion as to the cultural level to which the implements belong.

The object of the present paper is to place in the hands of the expert and the amateur alike simple statistical methods which, when applied to the dimensions of a sufficiently large group of implements, will enable the implements in question to be differentiated from others. In other words, the statistical treatment of the dimensions of a group of implements from a given industry yields results which are characteristic of that industry. At the same time it should clearly be understood that the use of statistical methods should supplement, but should not supplant, the consideration of the character of the flaking and of the special forms of the implements.

In the present state of our knowledge of the Neolithic period in England, and especially as regards its pottery, any light that can be thrown upon it is welcome, and it is on that account that I have brought before the Society a report on two discoveries of Neolithic remains: at Pangbourne, Berks., and Caversham, Oxon.

It is greatly to be regretted that owing to the circumstances of the discovery accurate observations could not be made. In May, 1928, workmen were engaged in levelling ground to make a tennis court, at “Farmhili,” Courtlands Hill, Pangbourne, and in doing so came upon, and, as is unhappily so often the case, disturbed and partly smashed a human skeleton, other animal bones, of which a few only survive, and a large bowl of coarse pottery, definitely of Neolithic type. It would seem that when found the bowl was imore or less complete, but Mr. G. W. Smith, of Reading, who visited the spot the day after the discovery, was only able to find about two-thirds of the vessel, in fragments, on the rubbish heaps of excavated material. These fragments, together with the other remains, were presented by the owner of the land, Lt.-Com. W. S. Macilwaine, R.N., to the Reading Museum, where the writer had the opportunity of examining them.

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.

The word ‘flint’ is applied as a designation of the tools in contradistinction to the tools and weapons of bone and ivory, and as an equivalent of the French ‘Silex.’ The materials from which the tools at La Madeleine are made are, in fact, chert, jasper, chalcedony, and, to a lesser extent, quartz.

The rock shelter of La Madeleine is situated at the base of lofty limestone cliffs, and the bone and ivory implements there have been well preserved.

The classification followed in the present paper will be that of Capitan and Peyrony, in which the Magdalenian culture is divided into three sections, designated Lower, Middle and Upper respectively.

There is little difference apparent to the eye in the flint tools of those three sections, and in consequence they have been classed in accordance with the character of the bone and ivory implements found in the same beds with them at La Madeleine.

The present paper is divided into three sections as follows:—

I. Observations on certain forms of Magdalenian tools.

II. Typical tools of the Lower, Middle and Upper Industries at La Madeleine.

III. The frequency distribution and dimensions of the flint tools of the industries at La Madeleine as a basis for comparison with Magdalenian industries elsewhere.

The Pin Hole Cave was the first of the five caves forming the Creswell Group, in which excavation work was undertaken by the Rev. Magens Mello in 1875, and where his first discoveries were made. Operations at that time were confined to a limited area at the entrance of the cave and were mainly superficial; subsequent excavations ignored the cave entirely, and consequently the important deposits contained there have remained intact. This is a fortunate circumstance, because the Pin Hole, by reason of its position in the cliff face, is the only cave of the group in which a stratified record of the whole sequence of Creswell cultures has been preserved. Had it been excavated in 1875 much important scientific evidence would inevitably have been missed which the systematic excavation of the cave by modern methods has revealed, thereby providing not only valuable information respecting climatic variations during the cave period, but also a type cave-section for Britain.

Two beds of cave-earth are present—an upper, red, cave-earth, 6 to 7 feet in thickness, sealed beneath either crystalline stalagmite or breccia; and a lower, yellow, cave-earth, 10 to 11 feet in thickness, the total average depth of the deposit being 17 feet to the bed rock of the cave. The upper cave-earth contains a series of typical Upper Palæolithic industries ranging from Upper Aurignacian and proto-Solutrean at its base, to a late Aurignacian culture at the top, corresponding in time to the Magdalenian of France.

Three-quarters of a mile N. by W. of the Railway Station at Denham, Bucks., a small rounded promontory juts out into the Valley of the Colne. The Geological Survey map shows this promontory as composed of Reading beds, capped by Glacial Gravel, part of a spread covering all the higher ground between the rivers Misbourne and Colne. In the G. S. memoir on sheet No. 255, the following observation is made:—“In the large embayment between the Thames and the Colne, the Glacial Gravel appears to have been subsequently resorted in places.” A well-known example of this occurs at Croxley Green, 4¼ miles N. by E. of this site. It has been fully described by Messrs. R. A. Smith and H. Dewey (Archæologia, vol. lxvi., pp. 195–214).

Late last autumn I heard that palæoliths had been picked up in the neighbourhood of Denham. On going there to investigate, I found that a cutting of over 200 yards, for a new road running N. and S., had been made through the promontory. Unfortunately the excavation work at this spot was practically finished, and both sides of the cutting had been battered.

Before studying the significance of the series of implements generally known as ‘discoidal polished flint knives,’ I should like first to acknowledge printed sources of informatıon, and secondly, assistance rendered by correspondents and curators of various collections. Many years ago Sir John Evans recognised the type and described and figured several examples in his ‘Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain,’ and later, in Volume XLIV., pages 97–100 of the Wiltshire Archæological Magazine, Dr. R. C. C. Clay collected some sixty odd records, which he classified according to their shape. The excuse for this paper is that it is an attempt to extract from as wide data as possible the significance of the forms and distribution of the type as a whole. In accumulating the necessary evidence I have received especial help from Mr. Burkitt, who has enabled me to handle the fine series in the Museum at Cambridge; from Mr. Leeds, who gave me access to the specimens of the Evans Collection now in the Ashmolean; from the Curators of London, Norwich and Ipswich Museums, who sent me interesting records; from Mr. Graham Callander, who not only checked my list for Scotland, but who also contributed new records and helpful suggestions. In addition, several private collectors have kindly let me have records of their specimens, and, in many cases, illustrations.

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.

The site forming the subject of this communication is an open-air station of Upper Palæolithic date, situated near the northern extremity of the Lincolnshire Cliff range, and previously unrecorded. The cultural horizon of the site closely corresponds with that of the upper levels of the rock-shelter known as ‘Mother Grundy's Parlour,’ Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, excavated by the writer in 1924, under the auspices of the British Association Research Committee for the Exploration of Caves in Derbyshire. Those excavations revealed, for the first time, the gradual development of our English phase of the Upper Aurignacian, and established the fact that this was of a distinctive character, and had been evolved practically free from Magdalenian influences. Excavations in the Mendip caves by the University of Bristol Spelæological Society, and elsewhere, have since confirmed these conclusions; and it is now recognised tlhat the culture is essentially an English expression of Upper Aurignacian, which is typical of the Upper Palæolithic in this country.

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.

One very common, if not the commonest, type of burin on the majority of microlithic sites in these two counties is the micro-burin or beaked graver. In the course of the last two years I have collected, chiefly from the surface, upwards of 70 specimens of this type on Surrey sites, and as many more from the same number of sites in Sussex. The Surrey sites lie on the lower greensand belt which, crossing the southern portion of the county from east to west, broadens out in the south-west into a wide expanse of picturesque uplands studded with heaths and commons, and terminating in a bold escarpment overlooking the Weald. The pigmy-bearing grounds are widely scattered over the beds of this formation, and range from the valleys and comparatively low-lying heaths between 200-300 feet O.D., at the foot of its northern slopes to the extreme edge of the escarpment, which at Leith Hill reaches a height of 965 feet O.D. On these sites the micro-burin is almost invariably present in greater or less numbers. A description of this curious implement by Capt. F. Buckley appeared in the Society's Proceedings 1921-22. As regards his statement that the marks of usage invariably appear along the edge opposite the notch formed by the removal of the back flake, my experience differs from his. Several of my specimens lack any marks of usage along this edge, and the beak rather than the edge appears in these examples to have been the working portion of the tool.