cutting edge all round, and a knife flake, triangular on section, but not peculiar to any age. The first two types, the coup-de-poing of French writers (PI. I.), have not been found in Britain north of a line from the Bristol Channel to the Wash ; but to the south of this boundary they are widely distributed. Many specimens have been found in gravel-pits excavated for road metal along the higher ridges of the valleys of the Ouse and its tributaries (Cam, Lark, and Little Ouse). They appear to have been particularly abundant in the neighbourhood of Bedford, where the higher fluviatile beds are about 59 feet above the river, and contain materials derived from the boulder clay through which the river has cut its channel. Mammalian remains have also been dug up from these drift-gravels, among
FIG. 10.—Section across the Valley of the Ouse, 2 miles W.N.W. of Bedford.
(After Lyell.)
1. Oolitic strata. 2. Boulder clay, or marine northern drift, rising to about 90 feet above the Ouse. 3. Ancient gravel, with elephant bones, fresh-water shells, and flint implements. 4. Modern alluvium of the Ouse. (a) Biddenham gravel-pits, at the bottom of which flint tools were found.
which the following were identified cave-bear, cave-hyæna, reindeer, stag, urus, bison, Hippopotamus major, Rhinoceros tichorhmus and megarhinus, Elephas antiquus, mammoth, and horse (Ancient Stone Implements, etc., p. 480). Here, then, we have a clear case of implements of the coup-de-poing type posterior to the boulder clay. Sir C. Lyell gives a section of the valley of the Ouse, 2 miles W.N.W. of Bedford, constructed by the experienced geologists Prestwich and Wyatt (Fig. 10), which clearly shows the relation of these implements to the boulder clay ; not only so, but some of them are made from stones which must have been picked out of the latter. In concluding his remarks Lyell thus writes : —