were inhabited the sea was far away, as no shells or fish-bones were among their kitchen débris. From their number it was evident that the district was then inhabited by a large population. They are now filled in with a dark coloured deposit, the result of mud washed into them by local rainfall. This mud contained no relics of any kind, all the animal bones, implements, and pottery having been found on the floor of the pits.
"After this flooding," writes Canon Greenwell, "had taken place, which either drove out the occupants or found the pits already deserted, they became covered by a deposit of surface soil from fifteen to eighteen inches in thickness. This soil, which equally covered the boulder clay and the pits, has never been in any way broken through, or otherwise disturbed in the spaces occupied by the pits, and, therefore, they must have been dug out and inhabited before the mud was carried into them, and the surface soil had later on accumulated over them. In this surface soil the ordinary implements of flint, and other stones characteristic of the Neolithic Age, and in some measure those of bronze, have been found in fair abundance. On the other hand, neither on the floors of the pits nor in the filling in has any example of the highly finished implements of the Stone Age, or any portion of one of them, come to light.
"This is a very important fact in connection with the time when the pits were occupied. That time can only, however, be
