The series of implements which the writer is describing is the result of seven years' research by Major Moore, of Walton, at the mouth of the river Deben on the Felixstowe side of Bawdsey Ferry.

Major Moore was the first to discover that in the heaped-up shingles which are continually shifting at this spot, many rolled and abraded flints showing human workmanship are included. As in the case of the Larne coast finds in Ireland, most of the flints have a white or creamy-white lustrous surface, though in some examples they are ochreous or even black.

The large majority consist of flakes and spalls, and are the refuse of a prehistoric flint factory, but among them are undoubted tools. To what culture they belong is the riddle, which we can only hope to solve by a better acquaintance with them.

Coming down out of the Chiltern Hills, the River Mimram runs in a comparatively narrow gorge in a S.E. direction, until it joins the Lea near Hertford. The last-named river pursues a parallel course to the westward, as a consequent stream, but on leaving the Chilterns it runs, still S.E., across a wide subsequent valley. The latter stretches, in a gentle curve, from Hertford on the E. to Rickmansworth, south of which place it debouches on the Thames valley. Down the huge subsequent valley ice must have pushed its way from the Bishop's Stortford and Hitchin gaps, reinforced by minor supplies from the Chilterns. There is boulder clay at Hertford and further west at Hatfield, within the valley. On reaching the southern side of the latter, in Hatfield Park, the Lea is suddenly deflected eastward. The way is barred by the high ground on that bank, capped by tertiary outliers. At Hertford it takes another and sharper turn, due south, to join the Thames at London.

The sub-Crag detritus-bed, sometimes called the nodule bed, or the Suffolk bone bed, was first brought to the notice of geologists by the late Prof. Henslow, who, in 1843, discovered that the Crag contained many nodules rich in lime phosphates, of great agricultural and commercial value—mostly known as “Coprolites,” though not of coprolitic origin, unless the spirally-formed bodies are the coprolitic rejectamenta of sharks or other animals having a spiral intestine.

The detrital bed is principally made up of the following constituents:—(1) Phosphatic nodules (the so-called Coprolites). (2) Sandstone nodules or box-stones. (3) Rocks of various ages earlier than the Crag. (4) Large chalk flints, many unrolled. (5) Rolled and waterworn bones, usually much mineralised. (6) Cetacean beaks, and other bones. (7) Bones and teeth of land mammalia. (8) Wood and other items, chiefly of uncertain age.

The above groups are of very different periods, and I propose treating each one separately, their origin and mode of occurrence as far as is known, or suggested.

In 1906 I described a “Cissbury type” station at Ringland, Norfolk, the implements lying abundantly on the surface of two fields and covering an area of about 440 yards in length by 90 yards in width. The fields are at the foot of a steep tree-clad ridge known as Cobb's Hills, and slope gently to the river Wensum which is but a few yards distant from the lower part of the fields and is here about 34 feet above O.D. Some of the implements were described and figured in our “Proceedings,” and the site has yielded about 900 implements and several thousand flakes.

In a gravel pit not far from Mannington, Norfolk, a number of cinerary urns have been from time to time exposed. The pit, perhaps better described as a sand pit, is on the summit of a mound or low hill, which does not appear to have been artificially raised, and the fact that some urns have been found in an adjoining field, also a low hill, renders it less likely that the natural contour of the ground has been disturbed. The urns lie a very short distance beneath the present surface, not more than from six or eight inches up to a foot, as a rule, and so they are generally much broken by ploughing, etc. But they are not so much disturbed but that their contents remain in situ.

The urns vary in the excellence of their workmanship, but none is very fully burnt. The accompanying photograph (Plate XXXV.) represents an exceptionally perfect one, and also some fragments of others showing the decoration. But the immediate purpose of this communication is to call attention to one in the bottom of which there was an oval hole. This had been mended by pouring molten lead into it; apparently the urn was stood upon sand and the molten lead poured into the inside, the excess running out into a feather edge. An examination of this specimen shows quite conclusively that the lead was used deliberately to mend the hole, and was not derived from some article of lead melted in the urn and accidentally running into the hole.