A Day's Elephant Hunting in Essex. 49 



duration t]ie few thousands of years which make up the 

 poor sum of the so-called historical period. 



THE SITE OF THE ILFOED GEAVES. 



The kind of hiding-place in which these old British 

 quadrupeds are found deserves to be carefully noted. The 

 site of the Ilford graves will help to tell us in what par- 

 ticular physical areas of our landscapes we may expect to 

 find similar memorials of Pleistocene Britain ; they may 

 put us on the track of fresh discoveries. 



Let it be noted, then, that these strange relics — these 

 remains of British bison and gigantic deer, of hippopotami, 

 rhinoceroses, and elephants — are found not on the site of 

 the old pastures and forests of Essex, but in the old ivater- 

 courses. How has this happened? 



These animals died the death of all wild creatures in a 

 state of nature. Some were slain by the carnivores, and 

 some, in sickness and old age, retired to the silence of the 

 thicket to die. Some died by the watercourses, and some 

 were swept into the river by floods, and were soon entombed 

 in a natural grave. The greater number would die on the 

 land and leave their remains unburied and exposed to 

 natural dissolution and decay. The bones which the 

 hyaenas spared would lie bleaching for a few years, and 

 soon perish and disappear from natural decay. Of the 

 skeletons thus exposed, nothing would be left to tell us that 

 these animals ever existed. 



How has it happened, then, that this interesting group 

 of Pleistocene mammalia has been so wondrously pre- 

 served? The answer is readily given, if we but look at 

 the function of a river valley in the economy of the land 

 surface. 



A RIVEE VALLEY AS THE HISTOEIAN OF THE LANDSCAPE. 



Our old river valleys cannot fail to be rich in relics of 

 the physical and zoological history of the countries which 

 they drain. The Thames and its tributaries may well be 

 rich in memorials of the physical and zoological history of 

 south-eastern England. From the time when the present 



