A Day's Elephant Himting in Essex. 



41 



In the pits of the tile-kilns at Epping, in excavations 

 near Woodford, at Theydon Mount, and at many a spot 

 ''famiHar long but never truly known," the daylight has 

 now been let in upon the long-buried scene. The dried 

 glacial mud, the transported rocks and fossils and masses 

 of earth, may be seen and handled for ourselves. At 

 Epping we find, almost as abundantly as at Finchley, the 

 transported spoils of the OoHtic and Liassic districts of 

 England. We may identify almost to a certainty the 

 morainic accumulations of the land ice which once, 

 stretching from the chalk wolds on the east to the flank of 

 Charnwood Forest on the west, came down the eastern 

 side of England from the mountain districts of the north. 

 We pick up at Epping and Finchley alike, the well-known 

 incurved shells of the Gryphea, the curious belemnites, and 

 the hard pebbles and pellets of chalk from the Lincolnshire 

 rocks which were abraded by this ice to furnish materials 

 for our Essex and Middlesex boulder clay. 



These solid memorials of a former climate, and of 

 terraqueous arrangements strangely different from those of 

 to-day, are yet only remnants of the once far-spreading 

 I)henomena. Nature, as we shall see, has perpetuated on 

 a larger scale her achievements in the Glacial landscapes 

 around us. 



RANGE OF THE ESSEX GLACIAL BEDS. 



The extent and range of the Great Chalky Boulder Clay, 

 which is to explain for us some of the mysteries of the 

 Ilford elephant pits, has at length been fairly determined 

 both in Essex and elsewhere north of the Thames. North 

 of Epping it extends for many miles in an almost unbroken 

 sheet. From the eastern brow of the Valley of the Lea 

 in this northern area to the mouth of the Chelmer we 

 may travel on foot without once leaving Glacial ground. 

 Beyond the northern borders of Essex we should trace it 

 stretching through the Midland Counties to the chalk wolds 

 of Lincolnshire. As we come southward to the Valley of 

 the Thames, we are introduced to a later chapter in its 

 history. Broken and discontinuous, it becomes still more 



