The following notes are the outcome of observations made several years ago. It is hoped that they may arouse the interest of some who will be tempted to pursue the enquiry with more definite results.

Briefly, my observations seem to show that the earthworks and stones in question extending from Harleston to Gorleston are of prehistoric date, perhaps of the same cycle as the stone circles of Stonehenge, Avebury, Stenness, and elsewhere, and, like them, designed, by a series of alignments with outlying monoliths, for solar and stellar observations—in the present case chiefly of the sun's rising and setting at the period of its greatest amplitude, viz., at the summer and winter solstices. Such astronomical considerations have been very fully considered by Sir Norman Lockyer. To his work, “Stonehenge and other British Monuments astronomically considered” (Macmillan, 1906), I am indebted for the clue which led me to the subject of these notes, and to this work I refer the reader for a vast amount of evidence parallel with that which I am now offering.

At the meeting held last December there was read a short note on a “Workshop Floor near Porthcurno, Cornwall.” During the past summer I dug up some of the ground round this site and obtained about 1000 pieces of flint; generally they were sparsely scattered, but here and there considerable numbers were found close together. In character and condition they were similar to those previously obtained, though it was noticeable that more implements and well-shaped flakes prevailed.

In the previous note no mention was made of the finding of:— 1. Six unbroken flint nodules, of which five had the crust rolled and battered. These may have come from one of the beaches in the district, where such nodules are to be found, though elsewhere rare. 2. Several long flat pieces of fine grained grit with naturally-rounded sides and ends. Three of these had one end bevelled. Recently one having both ends bevelled has come to hand. Perhaps they are Rubbers. Most of the specimens now exhibited were obtained in the later diggings. Mr. Reginald Smith kindly examined some of them, and his remarks, in inverted commas, are included in the descriptions. Dimensions are given in inches.

Several members having suggested to me the desirability, in these days of Zeppelin possibilities, of bringing before the Society an account of some of the additions to our knowledge of Wealden geology, which have accumulated during recent years, especially recently, before they are lost; I trust what I have to offer will prove of interest. Personally I would rather have waited until I had been able to work out thoroughly the Lenham-Diestian fauna, and have followed up certain of the fluviatile beds; but unfortunately this may mean years: there is another reason why all this should be widely known, and that is there is a growing tendency in certain quarters to minimize the age of the Crag beds, and to regard them as the marine equivalents of the landward Pleistocene river drifts. This of course reduces both the antiquity and value of the subglacial and sub-Crag discoveries in East Anglia, of which the members of the Society are naturally jealous.

Early this year we discovered a station, apparently with a homogeneous culture, on an arable field in the parish of Hellesdon, about half-a-mile above Norwich. The field, which has an area of about 12 acres, is on the north side of the river Wensum, from which it is about 74 yards distant at the south-east corner of the field, and 150 yards distant at the south-west corner. Between the field and the river is alluvium 12 ft. above O.D., and the field is 2—3 ft. higher. Flint implements, flakes and potboilers are very abundant on the lower part of the field, thin out rapidly on the higher part, and occur sporadically on the more elevated ground in the immediate vicinity.

Several thousand cones, flakes and chips were examined on the spot, but the number of implements retained was 482. The flint of which they are made is easily divisible into three groups.

The excavation which has yielded the flint implements to be described in this paper is situated on the farm occupied by Mr. W. Wilson, of Darmsden Hall, Suffolk, a place about eight miles north-west of Ipswich. The pit occurs at a height of about 180 ft. O.D., and on the edge of the western slope of the valley of the Gıpping. (See Ordnance Survey Map, Suffolk (East), Sheet LXVI., 5, Field 5a.) The deposit in which the pit is sunk belongs evidently to the plateau series, and was laid down prior to the complete erosion of the Gipping Valley. The exposed section shows 6 in. surface humus and about 8 to 10 feet of deposit, composed almost exclusively of black Tertiary pebbles (such as occur in the Woolwich and Reading beds) mixed with some amount of fine sand, which in places shows signs of stratification. A few chalk flints, somewhat abraded, occur with the pebbles, the whole resting upon fine stoneless sand. No fossils of any sort have been met with in ihe excavation, and the author is not familiar with any other deposit of a similar nature in East Suffolk.

In his able article on “The Chipping of Flint by Natural Agencies,” Mr. F. N. Haward endeavoured to prove that certain flints found in the basement-bed of the Red and Norwich Crags and supposed by some archæologists to have been chipped by man, were really the product of natural forces, evidence of the working of which he considered that he had found in the Eaton Pit, Norwich. He argued that the flints were chipped either before the deposition of the gravels above by forces moving over the surface, probably stones moved by snow or ice or by currents of water (p. 188), or during or after the deposition of the gravels above, by lateral or vertical movements in the gravels. This point of view was elaborated at considerable length and supported by an excellent series of illustrations.

In the County of Herts., gravel is worked for road metal in many places, and in 1915, when staying at Harpenden, I was able to give some attention to a spot not far from that place, already known to me from descriptions in Evans' “Stone Implements,” and Worthington Smith's “Primeval Man,” viz., No Man's Common.

This common extends over the face of a shallow valley, now dry, which as Sir J. Evans (“Ancient Stone Implements,” p. 602) remarks, was formerly the course of a stream, either the Lea itself or one of its branches. Two sections have been opened at this spot, one superficial, the other deep and extensive. It is from the latter—from which an immense amount of gravel has been removed—that I obtained the implements described in this paper. The common lies about a mile south of Wheathampstead.

Mr. H. St. Geo. Gray's excavations at Avebury under the auspices of a Committee of the British Association, have shown that the famous vallum, fosse, and circle had their origin at the end of the Neolithic or beginning of the Bronze Age.

One mile N.W. of Avebury stands Windmill Hill. It may well have been to Avebury what the civil town of Old Sarum and its fortifications were to the clergy and the cathedral. The summit is surrounded by the remains of a rampart, which, however, may not truly deserve that title. For along most of its length it has the appearance of a bank only, supporting the flat platform of the hill top. A trench, recently made in connection with a water supply, failed to disclose any trace of a ditch below the bank at that spot. This, it is true, was overlooking the steeper side of the hill. There were probably other defensive banks on the lower slopes of the hill. Many round barrows stand upon the hill, some within, but most without the camp. Not far from the hill, at Winterbourne Monkton, stood a long barrow, destroyed, alas, some years ago, by a farmer.

The well-known brick-earth deposits of Crayford, in Kent (forming part of the so-called 50-ft., or middle terrace of the Thames), have for many years yielded flint implements of Mousterian type, and more recently (1910-12) I have succeeded in finding the cores from which such implements were struck.

In the closing decades of the last century long, slender knives of fine quality flint were abundant, but since the writer first came to have the pits under observation (in 1903) implements of all kinds have been rare, and many winters go by with only the discovery of a few simple flakes.

References up till 1889 are given in the “Geology of London,” and, in 1905, Messrs. Hinton and Kennard brought them up to date in their paper on “The Relative Ages of the Stone Implements of the Lower Thames Valley,” This valuable paper was the first to attribute the characteristic Crayford implement to the Mousterian period, on account of the similarity in workmanship to those from Le Moustier.

It has always appeared to me that if any real advance in our knowledge of early man is to be made, it is essential that the sequence of events during the Pleistocene period must be known, but judging from recent literature the prevalent ideas as to this succession are decidedly nebulous. Some years ago Prof. Penck drew up a scheme of Pleistocene chronology based on stratigraphical Alpine evidence which may or may not have been correctly interpreted. Instead of checking this Teutonic theory by English evidence the theory was generally accepted, and various authors have since tried to squeeze the English facts into the German theory with the result that there is no agreement between them, and it is self-evident that either the facts are, or the theory is, wrong. The custom has been far too prevalent in this country of accepting German scientific work at the author's valuation, and it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that German science has all the inherent defects of modern German thought. Classical archæology has thrown off the yoke of German theories based on preconceived ideas. Is it too much to hope that Prehistoric archæology may soon attain freedom? After all even a Geheimrath can err, and there is no room in science for ex cathedra opinions.

I have chosen for the subject of my address a description of the excavations carried out at Grime's Graves by Mr. A. Leslie Armstrong and myself in the autumn of 1915. The work consisted in the digging over of four new floors, a description of which will form the main part of my paper. We also re-examined the mass of material left on three of the older floors excavated in 1914, viz., 3, 4, and 13, and devoted some time to searching the field which lies to the west of the plantation, which, in spite of many years' examination, still yields quantities of new implements. I have included, too, a description of some of the implements from a zone near Botany Bay, from which, in 1914, I obtained a number of pieces. This station lies about a mile on the Brandon side of the plantation, and is probably the ploughed-over site of some pits of similar date.

Owing to the kindness of some members of the Society, viz., Messrs. W. G. Clarke, H. H. Halls, R. H. Chandler, and the Rev. H. G. O. Kendall, I have been able to figure and describe a number of fine implements which clearly belong to the same culture—found either on the field or on the surface of the Graves, and these, together with various specimens found on these spots by Mr. Armstrong and myself, are dealt with separately.

Since the publication of the “Report on the Excavations at Grime's Graves, Weeting, Norfolk,” the following additional information has been received.

Dr. Knud Andersen has identified the following bones:—Pit I., Layer 4, Natterer's Bat, Whiskered Bat. Pit II., Layer 6, Natterer's Bat, Whiskered Bat, Common Shrew (Sorex araneus). The last-named had not previously been noted at the Graves.

Mr. Henry Dewey, F.G.S., examined some pellets found in a pocket in the sand, 2 ft. from the west buttress of No. 6 Gallery and 2 ft. above the floor in Pit II. Many similar nodules were found during the excavations. He says:—“They consist of a mixture of chalk and hydrated-oxide of iron, which have probably arisen as the result of weathering of iron pyrites nodules. When boiled in dilute hydrochloric acid a solution of ferric-chloride results, pointing to the presence of iron in the pellets. The substance gives a brownish-red streak, and could of course be used as red ochre.”