Item 75 - Letter from John Stevens Henslow

6 pp

Kew Gardens - JSH has not had an opportunity to answer WW's queries. Although 'recent observations have not yet absolutely demonstrated the truth of Mr Frere's [John Frere] original account in the Archaeologia, I have now seen that account, and am quite prepared to admit the extreme probability of its correctness, and that the celts [pre-historic axe like instrument] really occur in undisturbed Drift - of a freshwater origin'. The celts are the work of man and are like the ones he has seen from the French localities. They are very old and were probably used as hatchets mounted on wood. JSH sees no reason not to 'suppose a considerable elevation throughout the N. of Europe to have taken place within a moderate number of 1000's of years, sufficient to explain this. The facts related in the letter of the Danish Professor (whose name I forget) in the Athenaeum, appear to prove that in some cases very little alteration indeed has taken place by the action of water upon the mounds in which the savages who used these celts stored them, as it should seem (from Sir C. Lyell's account of a modern mound)'. JSH hopes 'to visit the locality at Amieus, where I think it has been clearly demonstrated these weapons are found in undisturbed Drift'.