56 Mr. Henry Walker's Lecture : 



themselves no inconsiderable item. Sir Antonio may well 

 assure us that elephant-hunting in Essex is really an 

 expensive hobby. 



And now the grander trophies of elephant -hunting in 

 Essex are to reward our eyes, the spectacle of the various 

 skeletons of elephant, rhinoceros, and deer that have thus 

 been excavated from these fields in the Barking and London- 

 road. We take train at Ilford for Stratford. We soon 

 arrive at Sir Antonio Brady's private museum at Stratford- 

 le-Point, which we are kindly invited to inspect. Here is 

 a brief account of some of the sights we were privileged to 

 witness in this wonderful collection of the old-world zoology 

 of the Thames Valley. 



The five bisons' crania which were discovered in the 

 Uphill pits are lying upon a table, and are still enclosed in 

 plaster. They have now to be boiled or soaked in a fluid 

 which shall restore to them the gelatine they have lost 

 during the millenniums they have been buried in the bosom 

 of the earth. Tliis is the process which all the bones and 

 tusks undergo to ensure their permanent hardening. 



On the shelves around is a startling display of gigantic 

 skulls and monstrous bones — bones such as Samson might 

 have coveted when an ass's jawbone was his only weapon. 

 Here is a mammoth's tusk ten feet in length. The teeth and 

 jaws represent elephants of every age and size, from the 

 sucking calf with his milk molars, to the patriarch of the 

 herd, whose ultimate molars are so worn down as to be 

 almost useless for grinding his food. Professor Owen has 

 seen a mammoth's tooth that measured one foot seven inches 

 in length, following the curve from end to end on the 

 convex side ! 



The characteristic of the Ilford elephants is the number 

 of the plates in the last molars, which has not been found 

 to exceed 19 or 20, as against the 24, and sometimes 28, 

 found in other species. The largest tooth is 10 inches in 

 length. The sj)ectator cannot fail to be struck with the 

 long spiral curves of the tusks of the adult mammoths, as 

 compared with the almost straight tusks of the more familiar 

 species of modern days. Yet in spite of the enormous size 



