4 THE NEW RAILWAY BETWEEN UPMINSTER AND ROMFORD. 



Romford last March, Mr. H. E. Woodward stated that, having seer\ 

 this section, he thought it afforded a better exposure of Boulder 

 Clay than he had elsewhere seen in Essex during two years' work on 

 the Geological Survey. The greatest thickness measured was fifteen 

 feet. When this cutting was visited by the Geologists' Association 

 on March 5th, 1892, Mr. Robertson, the engineer of the line, very 

 kindly exhibited a collection of the most interesting specimens 

 obtained from the Boulder Clay. They included many lumps of 

 Kimeridge Clay, some examples of Gryphcea dilataia from the 

 Oxford Clay, and a vertebra which had been determined by Prof. 

 Seeley as plesiosaurian. Some small shells in a glacially-scratched 

 lump of bituminous shale belonging to the Kimeridge Clay were 

 identified by Mr. H. B. Woodward as Lncma minuscula. 



A space of about 250 yards, without any section, intervenes 

 between the cutting just described and that on both sides of the 

 road at Butts Green. Towards the eastern end of the Butts Green 

 cutting only sand and gravel could be seen, the greatest thickness 

 shown being about ten feet. But near the road five or six feet of 

 London Clay appeared beneath eight or nine feet of sand and 

 gravel, and London Clay was more or less visible at the bottom of 

 the cutting as far as it extended in a westerly direction. 



West of the stream, which crosses the railway about 500 yards 

 from Butts (ireen, there are cuttings as far as the junction of the 

 new railway with the Great Eastern line, about half a mile east of 

 Romford Station. Close to this junction I have seen London Clay, 

 as well as the overlying sand, gravel or loam ; but nearer the Brent- 

 wood Road a permanent wetness in the sand and gravel, at a depth 

 of about ten feet, afforded the only sign of the proximity of clay. 



\\\ my description, already referred to, in The Essex 

 Naturat.ist, of the sections between Grays and Stifford, I some- 

 what rashly remarked that having arrived at the London Clay on the 

 northern flank of the Mardyke valley, we might be sure that the 

 sections seen southward were those of the most geologically interest- 

 ing part of the line, the rest of it being likely to show nothing but 

 London Clay, with a capping of gravel or loam. Fortunately, as the 

 Hornchurch cutting demonstrates, my prediction was a mistake. 

 On the other hand, my remarks deprecating the assumption that 

 signs of ice-action of some kind necessarily imply that beds showing 

 it belong to the Glacial Period (in forgetfulness of the fact that ice 

 has been a geological agent from a very early period, and is one now), 



