A Day's Elephant Hunting in Essex. 29 



they are, at the railway station, at two o'clock on 

 the Saturday next following the discovery. They have 

 sniffed the quarry from afar, and have come in multi- 

 tudinous array, and with something of the hunter's zest, to 

 stalk the country. Perchance some lingering game may 

 yet be found, now that the ancient lurking-place has been 

 revealed. 



The scene on which we are entering this Saturday 

 afternoon is full of forest history and tradition. What 

 more excites the memory of the history-loving Londoner 

 than the mention of the old Essex forests, wdiose fragments 

 of their former self still linger near our City? Time was 

 when all the Essex county lay within the bounds of a Eoyal 

 forest — when the "dim and watery woodland " stretched 

 across from Waltham to Colchester and the sea. What giant 

 specimens of the once abundant forest fauna may not still 

 be found in Essex to tell us of the former grandeur of these 

 wild arboreal tracts ! These may be the speculations passing 

 in our minds as our train moves out of the station, and 

 carries us into the heart of Bethnal-green, where, from the 

 viaduct, we look down upon the vast acreage of red-tiled 

 housetops that spread before us. But other topics intervene, 

 and we will not lose the talk of our fellow naturalists, each 

 of whom has some discovery or incident of recent rambles to 

 relate. The microscopical brethren of ''The Quekett" tell 

 of researches made on Saturday last in Hackney Marshes — 

 of curious polyzoans found in the Canal, of strange-looking 

 ''gloohidise" and other creatures with fearsome names, and 

 of Anacharis [Bahingtonia damnosa !) choking the brooks. 

 The geologists, too, are full of narrative and anecdote. You 

 hear what places around London are good for field geology — 

 what new gravel pits, railway cuttings, and other excava- 

 tions have recently been visited, and what fossils from 

 the clay, or sand, or chalk have thus been found. So we 

 soon pass Mile-end Station and find ourselves at Ilford. 



Here at Ilford we leave the train, which runs on to 

 Chelmsford and Colchester some sixty passengers the 

 lighter. Ilford itself has something to reward the traveller, 

 who will not look in vain for ancient monuments of man's 



