borough, has in his collection a series of about forty implements and flakes from Fordingbridge, many of them water-worn.
The gravel here rests upon Tertiary beds, and consists principally of subangular flints, with many Lower Tertiary pebbles, a few pieces of greensand iron-stone, and more rarely quartz pebbles among them. The beds are about 10 feet thick, and their height above the river about 40 feet. Remains of mammoth[1] have been found in them.
Fig. 473.—Fordingbridge. 12
Farther down the course of the Avon, palæolithic implements have not as yet been found; and in the basin of the Stour, which joins the Avon at Christchurch, but one discovery has been made. This was of a small brown ochreous implement, made from a large external flake, trimmed into a somewhat kidney-shaped outline, and having its edges worn round, and its angles waterworn. It was found at Wimborne Minster, by Mr. W. F. Tiffin, of Salisbury, in gravel brought from a pit in the neighbourhood, and not in situ. I have searched for implements, but in vain, in some of the pits near Wimborne, though the gravel, especially at Oakley, has all the characters of a deposit likely to contain them.
Though the united Avon and Stour now find their way into the sea near Christchurch, it seems probable, as will subsequently be shown, that they were in remote times affluents of a river running from west to east, and that a portion of this river, now widened out by the sea,- ↑ "Flint Chips," p. 28. Codrington, "Quar. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1870), vol. xxvi. p. 537.
