Journal of Proceedings. xxix 



ran through Ilford about 200 yards south of the present High Road. 

 In the village are eight houses and a chapel, formerly part of a 

 Hospital dedicated to St. Mary and St. Thomas of Canterbury, now 

 used as Almshouses for poor persons, and supposed to have been 

 founded by Adeliza, Abbess of Barking, in the reign of King Stephen, 

 as a retreat for lepers. Of cqurse there is a trace of one of Queen 

 Elizabeth's hunting lodges; ignoble, indeed, must be the locality in the 

 Forest district which does not claim some remembrance of the 

 Imperial (and imperious) Diana. From the Naturalist's point of view 

 the lanes, ditches, and marshes about Ilford are not without attrac- 

 tions, although the impious and devastating hands of the speculative 

 builder are active at their evil work: "destroying beauties that took 

 centuries to make and not a month to mar." But on this charming 

 Saturday afternoon, we (that is some fifty or sixty members and friends 

 of " Our Club ") have not met to lament the blows dealt by a money- 

 loving and land-jobbing generation at the fair face of Nature, nor to 

 talk scandal about Queen Elizabeth — we seek records of a past com- 

 pared with which human histories and legends are but tales of yester- 

 day, and look for antiquities treasured up in the womb of earth, aeons 

 before Auctioneers were dreamt of as the coming Iconoclasts ! And long 

 will Ilford claim a place in the remembrance of those true antiquaries, 

 the Geologist and Palaeontologist ; not from its perishing tokens of 

 Roman Legions, fair Queens, fat Abbots, or prim Nuns, but from its 

 rich store of fossil bones: relics of the gigantic animals which lived and 

 died in Britain during the ages limiting that wonderful phase in its 

 life-history, called Pleistocene in modern Earth-lore. The story of the 

 discovery of these records of old-world life at Ilford dates back for 

 nearly seventy years. In 1812, about 300 yards from the River Roding, 

 in a field forming part of an estate called " Clements," some bones of 

 Oxen, horns of Stags, and head bones and teeth of Elephants were 

 disinterred ; and in or about 1824, Mr. Gibson, of Stratford, obtained 

 a collection from near the same spot, portions of which are now supposed 

 to be in the Museum of the College of Surgeons. One of our party, 

 Mr. J. Eliot Howard, F.R.S., informed the Editor that he well 

 remembered, when a boy, some of Mr. Gibson's specimens being 

 brought into his father's office at Stratford, and seeing them undergo 

 the process of anointing with a solution of glue to prevent them 

 crumbling into pieces. Then, years afterwards. Sir Antonio Brady 

 took up the quest ; with what success let his magnificent collection 

 of Pleistocene Mammalia serve as an imperishable memorial. We 

 have the honour and great advantage of his company this afternoon 

 as one of our conductors, his coadjutor being Mr. Henry Walker, 

 F.G.S., so well known to members of the Club. Our party also in- 

 cludes Mr. A. R. Wallace, F.L.S., the celebrated traveller, philoso- 

 phical naturalist, and geologist; Mr. Worthington Smith, F.L.S., of 



