34 Mr. Henry Walker s Lecture : 



But all this time the amateurs of our party are getting 

 eager for the sport. Enough of geology. What came they 

 out for to see, but an elephant or rhinoceros dug up entire ! 

 They have read the wondrous story of the Tungoosian 

 fisherman and the mammoth on the shores of the icy 

 Lena ; they have come prepared to assist at a similar 

 scene. They are on tiptoe to carry home some tusk or 

 gigantic tooth as a trophy of the eventful day. But our 

 cool and wary leaders are choosing their time. Before we 

 begin to make search for ourselves, it is well we should 

 understa.nd the conditions of fossil-linding at Ilford, at 

 least as regards the larger /erce naturce of the district. 



There is a "close time" for the game at Ilford as 

 elsewhere. In other words, the work of excavation in 

 these pits only goes on at a certain period of the year. In 

 the spring the ground is opened for the purpose of removing 

 the earth, which in the autumn is to be made into bricks. 

 It is then that important zoological discoveries are generally 

 made. In digging out the clay, the workmen come across 

 the fossil remains of elephants, rhinoceros, deer, and other 

 animals mostly of extinct species. These remains are found 

 in nearly every instance scattered over one particular floor 

 on which the great mass of tenacious brick-earth is depo- 

 sited. The perpendicular section made by the workmen 

 presents the appearance of a wall some twenty feet high, 

 often composed of layers of flat earth, deposited in hori- 

 zontal lines. Immediately above and about the spot where 

 these animal remains are found, the earth is denser and 

 richer in colour, and is generally arranged in a kind of 

 mound of some feet in thickness. The men are so well 

 acquainted with the indications which tell of the proximity 

 of bones that there is little danger of their destroying the 

 fossils in digging. The principal indication is a kind of fine 

 silver-sand, which is found powdered over the spot, and 

 which crumbles down more readily than the soil above it. 

 The last excavation took place some six weeks ago, and 

 then Sir Antonio was fortunate enough to secure five perfect 

 skulls of the great fossil ox, Boa primigenms (the contem- 

 porary of the British mammoth), with horn-cores complete. 



