xiv Journal of Proceedings. 



One difficulty which always strikes the observer is to account for 

 the number and variety of animals, the bones of which are found in the 

 Uphall Brickfields. The spot appears to have been a perfect grave, 

 yard for large animals, both tropical and boreal. Ilford was a ceme- 

 tery for mammoths, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, bisons, et hoc genus 

 omnes, in the old ice-age, thousands — nay, tens of thousands — of years 

 ago ; and a cemetery for Londoners it was at the present day. Sir 

 Antonio believed that the facts could be explained somewhat as 

 follows: — England in the Pleistocene age was not an island, but formed 

 part of the continent of Europe. The Thames was certainly there, 

 and although only a tributary of the great river which drained the 

 vast valley now the North Sea or German Ocean, was a very large 

 and broad stream. The herds of animals whose remains are found 

 buried at Ilford occupied the whole territory so drained. There is 

 reason to believe that the spot where Ilford now is was at that period 

 the centre of a lake-like expansion of the river, bounded on the one 

 side by the Kentish, and on the other by the Hertfordshire, hills. The 

 river was, of course, not then confined, as now, by artificially con- 

 structed banks. Bones were often found deposited before the cartila- 

 ginous connections had been dissolved, but it was impossible to believe 

 that all those large animals had lived and died in so small a space. 

 Although the remains were not water-worn, they must have been 

 carried to the Ilford brickfield by the same agency that deposited the 

 sand, gravel, and silt around them — namely, water. The main stream 

 probably entered the lake-like expansion of the river at or near one 

 corner, and left at another, imparting to the current a somewhat rotary 

 motion, which motion would tend to drift floating bodies towards the 

 centre. The heavier parts of drowned animals, carried along with the 

 stream, would be deposited near to the middle of the lake ; and when 

 decomposition set in, the heaviest bones would first become detached 

 from the carcases, fall off, and sink, whilst the lighter ones would be 

 carried further, and some perhaps become ultimately disintegrated and 

 lost. This would explain why so many heavy bones, tusks, teeth, and 

 skulls were seen together. The bones were mostly found in the sands 

 under the brick-earth, soddened with percolating water, by which 

 agency all the animal matter had been washed out, leaving the form 

 of the bone and " skin " {sic) perfect, but consisting only of the mineral 

 skeleton, and that in a very soft and pappy state. Their exhumation 

 is therefore a matter of great difficulty, requiring the exercise of much 

 skill. Sir Antonio gave a minute explanation of the ingenious though 

 tedious process employed in exhuming the large and extremely fragile 

 bones from the earthy matrix in which they are found — a process 

 rendered more difficult in the case of large tusks by the dotihle curve 

 of those of the mammoth. The last tusk he dug up was over ten 

 feet long. We owed the method employed to the genius and skill of 



