Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 25.djvu/581

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FLOWER—DISCOVERIES OF FLINT IMPLEMENTS.
449

further has transpired. It is not impossible that the bed a may, instead of underlying, be bedded vertically against No. 5, and that the shaft, after passing through No. 5, encountered a lateral protrusion of a. If so, there would be no reason for regarding a as anything else than the bed No. 6, which it resembles in parts distant from Norwich.


2. On some recent Discoveries of Flint Implements of the Drift in Norfolk and Suffolk, with observations on the Theories accounting for their Distribution. By J. W. Flower, Esq., F.G.S.

(Read April 28, 1869[1].)

[Plate XX.]

In June 1866 I had the honour to lay before the Society a paper upon some flint implements then lately found at Thetford in the valley of the Little Ouse river[2]; I have lately occupied myself with further investigations of the same district, the results of which, are, I trust, of sufficient interest to justify me in bringing them to the notice of the Society.

The localities which I have now examined are four in number. In each of these flint implements have been found, and in several of them in great abundance, corresponding in the main, as well in fashion as in material, with those of St. Acheul, Thetford, Salisbury, and Icklingham, which are now so well known.

Broomhill.—The first deposit which I have to notice is found at Broomhill, on the north bank of the river, about five miles from Thetford, and two from Santon Downham mentioned in my former paper. The implements, which are usually much rolled and worn, and are often stained to a chocolate-colour, are here found in a gravel-pit about 350 feet from the river-bank. They are usually met with in a bed of ferruginous flint-gravel about 2 feet thick, resting immediately on the surface of the chalk, and 5 or 6 feet above the level of the river. This gravel, which is very coarse and not much rolled, contains large flint nodules, some of them weighing over a hundredweight, and is mixed with rounded quartzite pebbles and rolled fragments of chalk. It is overlain by another stratum of gravel, less ferruginous and containing a greater proportion of broken chalk; and this bed, in its turn, is capped by a mass of siliceous sand, sparingly intermixed with angular flints of no great dimensions. These several beds constitute a mass of from 25 to 30 feet in thickness. No gravel is found on the opposite bank; the ground there, which is moor or fen, rises very slightly above the river-surface, and forms a plain extending about half a mile to the base of the chalk-hills.

Gravel Hill, Brandon.—At this place, situate two miles and a half west of Broomhill and on the Suffolk side of the river, another

  1. For the Discussion on this paper, see p. 272 of the present volume.
  2. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxiii. p. 45.