A Day's Ele-phaiit Hunting in Essex. 37 



Happily, he speedily returns with good news. The natives 

 are not hostile, but amicable. They are inclined to trade 

 and barter. Better than ah, their wares consist of the 

 very spoils we are in search of. They carry with them, 

 wrapped in textures of evidently European fabric, some of 

 the enormous stone-hke teeth of fossil elephants, and 

 various gigantic bones. A brisk exchange is soon set up. 

 The specie of the Victorian era, strange to say, is current 

 in the land. One of the best of the purchases is the 

 complete lower jaw of a young mammoth, with the tooth 

 in place. (The junior geologists of our party are much 

 impressed when Sir Antonio pronounces upon it in the 

 vernacular of science: — "Left lower ramus of calf mam- 

 moth, with third milk molar in situ.'' Indeed, some of the 

 party were seen surreptitiously writing down the mystic 

 words.) The lucky purchaser of this relic of the juvenile 

 Ilford elephants will be fortunate if he get his prize safely 

 home. 



Meantime not a few of our party have resumed hunting 

 for themselves. Some of them have unearthed a few tro- 

 phies — fragments of tusk (genuine ivory) flaked off a fine 

 specimen too deeply imbedded for present extraction ; 

 several molar plates of elephants' teeth, horncores of fossil 

 oxen, and teeth of fossil horse. Soon our palaeontologist 

 from the British Museum is as busy as our forefather in 

 Eden giving names to the various animals, as each member, 

 joint, or limb is brought before him by the delighted dis- 

 coverers. In short, it is soon felt even by the most sceptical 

 of the company that Ilford is indeed a great zoological 

 preserve, and must have a wonderful story. 



What this story is, and how it involves the story of 

 Essex, and of a still wider region in times long since gone 

 by, we are now to learn. 



