306 ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



minerals at the British Museum, has confessed, with reference 

 to this science, tliat '* The pages of its text-books are sprinkled 

 with wonderful formulae desi.e'ned by perverse chemists, and with 

 unpronounceable hieroglyphics maliciously invented by cruel 

 crystallographers. "^ 



With regard to the county of Essex it must be conceded 

 that its mineralogy is of so meagre a character as to be far less 

 attractive tnan its botany or its zoology. It may even be 

 thought that minerals stand to Essex rather in the relation of 

 snakes to Iceland. The case is hardly so bad as this, biit still I 

 .am bound to confess that the mineralogist w^ho visits Essex must 

 not come hither with the expectation of finding himself in a 

 happy hunting ground. 



** This county," said Morant, " not having any large and 

 high mountains, the usual parents and beds of Metals and Minerals, 

 none of these are therefore to be look'd for here."- However, on 

 the very next page of his work, in referring to the " Fossils of 

 Essex " (and ofcourse using the word " Fossil " in the compre- 

 hensive sense in which it was commonly used in his day — and 

 w^ith perfect etymological justification — so as to include minerals) 

 he tells us that " what is Yound in greatest quantity is the 

 Copperas stone or Pyrites." That is a statement w'hich could 

 hardly be improved by the best naturalist of the twentieth 

 •century, for it remains true to-day that in our meagre list of 

 the minerals of Essex Pyrites occupies the first place. 



And yet, curiously enough, this common mineral has some- 

 times been overlooked. In 1868 the late Mr. Townshend Hall, 

 a personal friend of mine, published a work under the title of a 

 Mineralogist's Directory, giving a list of British minerals arranged 

 county by county. Under the heading of" Essex " there is no 

 mention of Pyrites — the mineral products of the county being 

 limited, according to this wTiter, to a single species — Gypsum, 

 and its variety Selenite.^ 



The two minerals to which I have just referred — pyrites and 

 gypsum — are almost the only well-marked species of which our 

 county can boast, and the few observations which I am about to 



1 Presidential Address to the Mineralogical Society, Mineralogical Magazine, vol. viii. 

 <i889), p. 141. 



2 The Hi'.toyy and Antiquities of the County of Essex, 1768. Introduction, p. xxv. 



3 The Mineralogist's Directory, or a Guide to the Principal Mineral Localities in the 

 United Kingdom 0} Great Britain and Ireland. By Townshend M. Hall, London, 1S6S. 

 <Essex p. 61. t 



