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peculiarity of that district, the dark-green of fir plantations and the brightness of furze-bloom being never distant from that part of its course. At Euston it is met by an affluent from Hepworth, which ornaments the Duke of Grafton's park. Below Thetford the arid sands add little or nothing, but the fall is noticeable for some distance. The banks then gradually retire and the bed deepens, the last contribution being from Lakenheath New Lode, whence, by 'Brand Creek,' the river goes as of old to Lynn, the present lines of the Great Ouse being a modern invention.

Lastly, the Lark, or Burn, and the Linnet, uniting near Bury, flow north-westerly, by Lackford, Icklingham, Barton Mills, and Mildenhall, to join the ancient Cam and Great Ouse at Prickwillow, whence the company passes on to Brand Creek.' But in old days their course was by Upwell and Wisbech into the Wash, near the Walpoles in Marshland. No right-bank supply reaches this channel; but on the left bank one stream rising near Barrow, and another already mentioned, called the Kennet,1 accord their help to a strong line of county demarcation.

From a careful survey of the land to the east of Mildenhall, I am inclined to think that some at least of this body of water used to find its way into the Little Ouse by the low ground of Lakenheath Fen.

This analysis of the hydrography of the county will be found to have some value in relation to the settlements of earlier races which we shall have to consider. Access to a river-bounded district is often over bars which have been formed just below the discharge of the smaller channels into the larger, but still more frequently over gravel-beds, formed by post-glacial action, more especially should these positions happen to coincide with a narrower valley, so that marsh may not neutralize the advantage gained by shallowness. Stratford St. Mary, on the Stour,

1 The Dale in Anstis MS. Dalham is said to be named from it.

is an instance of the former, Shotford, over the Waveney, of the latter.

On the north side the chief entrances would be by Brandon, Thetford, Rushford, Lopham Fen, Scole (the Shoal), Shotford, and Wainford (Wanneyford in old maps); on the south by Wixoe, Clare, Sudbury, Bures, Nayland, and Stratford St. Mary. Kentford and Beck Bridge, near Freckenham, directed the north-west tracks. Then southward stretched a free country, till about Moulton began the thickets of the Suffolk Woodlands, through which there were tracks into Cambridgeshire, some, no doubt, well known at the time of the Roman invasion. As to the east, the rovers of the sea could beach their boats where they pleased.

Generally speaking, there are three varieties of soil in Suffolk. Along the east coast lies a stretch of light heathy land, purple with that lovely blossom in August, all ablaze with furze-blossom at times, and never without a sparkle of it, according to the well-known saying, that 'when furze is out of blossom, kissing is out of fashion.' Then some two-thirds and more is clay, sometimes of a very stiff character, extending through 'High' Suffolk and the Woodlands to the western border. Forming a band near the north-west corner, and turning south to the Essex border, comes the great line of chalk, running from the Yorkshire Wolds to Dorset. It reaches no great elevation, 352 feet above the sea-level, near Haverhill, being its greatest altitude, and is in many places well strewn with sand and gravel. The north-west portion is called the 'breck' country, terminating in the turfproducing fens at the back of Mildenhall and Lakenheath.

Below the surface our investigations will not go beyond the chalk, the exposures whereof do not occur in the south-east corner of the county, being limited by a line from Sudbury through Ipswich to Dunwich. This great cretaceous bed is probably at least 800 feet thick on the average. The boring close to the Great Eastern

Hotel at Harwich gave 890 feet of chalk and chalkmarl; another at Combs, near Stowmarket, 817 feet of chalk.

This is the highest of the formations termed Secondary by the geologist. Next in order come those Tertiary strata which place us more in touch with the world as it now is. These were distinguished by Sir Charles Lyell into Eocene, Meiocene, and Pleiocene (the Dawn of the New, Less-New, and More-New), each in its turn further subdivided. Of the Eocene, we have a distinct exposure of the Thanet greensand round Sudbury, with further traces north of Hadleigh and near Ipswich; the mottled clays and sands of the Reading bed appear at the brickyards of St. Helen's, Ipswich, as also at Higham, Bramford, Copdock, Great Cornard, and elsewhere between Ipswich and Sudbury; the London Clay is found in the south of the hundreds of Babergh, Cosford, and Sampford, between the valleys of the Orwell and the Stour. Sometimes it may be seen in the sections of cliffs and deep-cut valleys, as in the Deben estuary and the cliffs near Orford Ness. In it such molluscs as the Voluta and Nautilus, teeth of various kinds of sharks, and the carapaces of turtles are found; but the huge saurians have no remains in the Eocene strata.

No beds of any higher Eocene or of Meiocene formation occur in the county. Where there is no London Clay the Pleiocene strata rest on the chalk.

On the London Clay, however, lies a thin stratum, not exceeding a yard in depth, containing remains of the rhinoceros, hyæna, and other creatures, including some kind of marine monster, to which the appropriate name of 'halitherium' has been given. This is called the 'Bonebed' or 'Box-bone' Deposit, from the lumps of dark sandstone which occasionally, when broken, are found to enclose shells or organic remains. The theory is that this bed may have been formed by the break-up of earlier deposits. It lies between the estuaries of the Orwell and the Deben.

The Coralline or White Crag of the warm-temperate Old Pleiocene period, abounding in shells, some of the Mediterranean species, occupies about ten square miles round Orford. There are small outliers at Ramsholt, Sutton, and Tattingstone. Working upwards through the cold-temperate Later Pleiocene period, we have the Lower Red Crag, near Felixstowe, and the Butley Crag, which seem closely allied; the Norwich Crag, at Thorpe Ness and Bulcamp; and the Chillesford Crag.

The Lower Red Crag, of which the layers lie much aslant, as though they had been piled around islands of older coral formation, contains at its base, in addition to shells, certain lumps of phosphatic nature called coprolites-the dried-up remains of the great lizard-like creatures of these periods. Their commercial value as manure was first pointed out by the late Professor Henslow. In 1877 the amount of 10,000 tons of coprolites, at about £3 a ton, came from Suffolk alone.

As we rise from stratum to stratum, observation tells us of decrease, general though not uniform, both in temperature and sea-depth. The German Ocean dwindled till England became part of the Continent. A notable monument of this epoch is the Forest Bed, exposed along the foreshore from Kessingland by Corton and Hopton, and appearing again off the Norfolk coast. It yields a grand supply of animal fossils, as some of our summer visitors know-remains of mammoth, especially teeth; also of rhinoceros, stag, Irish elk, and other smaller creatures; fish-scales, fruit, seeds and stumps of trees.

Then came a subsidence and a shallow sea, of which we have trace in the heath-covered shingle south of the Blyth. The cold became more intense. The Lower Boulder Clay was formed, and afterwards covered by thin layers of loams, often strongly impregnated with iron. In some intervals of relaxation there was a further sheeting of interglacial beds of sand and gravel, which occupy a large area along the coast, and in the peninsulas of the south-east.

The Great Boulder Clay, which so largely predominates in High Suffolk, and is the principal element in the surface-soil of the whole county, is the outcome of the utmost rigour of cold. It is crammed with proofs of its glacial origin, jumbled together in a fashion which seems confused, but yet is in accordance with forces working according to law: iron pyrites, ammonites, and belemnites, both ordinary and pestle-formed, echini and shells of many sorts, mingled with lumps of hard stone and chalk, flints of fine blue, red, and purple tints.

Having thus endeavoured to deal with the geology of the county, we turn to the first vestiges of humanity, in the shape of those tools made of stone, while as yet the metals were slumbering in their ores. These are distinguished generally into the palæolithic, or earlier, and the neolithic, or later, implements.

Those of the palaeolithic period abound on the lighter soils of Suffolk, especially in the north-west, some of which may have come from the great flint works at Grimes Graves, in the parish of Weeting, just over the border. The parishes of Mildenhall, Icklingham, Lakenheath, and Santon Downham are eminent in this respect.

In the fluvio-glacial gravel in the parish of Hoxne, overlying the Norwich Crag, which lies, as it were, banked against the chalk (possibly an old shore-line), flint weapons used commonly to be found by labourers, who called them 'fighting stones,' and used them in mending the roads. A paper, additionally interesting from its early date, was read by Mr. John Frere, F.R.S., F.S.A., before the Society of Antiquaries in 1797, on these prehistoric relics; and the discovery has been further treated of by Professor Prestwich1 and Sir John Evans.2

The primitive implements called 'celts,' whether used as axes, adzes, chisels, or what not, are the most notable of these objects. Among other places, they have been 1 'Philosophical Transactions,' part ii., 1860.

2 'Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain,' p. 516, etc.

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