A SUPPOSED NEOLITHIC SETTLEMENT. 95 



This is only one of the numerous patches of low ground in 

 Essex which were, in all probability, inhabited by man during 

 the stone-age. And this early race of settlers, judging from the 

 remains of their domestic animals and their manufactured imple- 

 ments and other relics, were probably in the same state of 

 civilization with the Lake-dwellers of the Continent, those of 

 Switzerland, Holland, and Brittany. It is not in the deep 

 alluvial beds alone that their relics are met with, but on the 

 surface of the land, everywhere scattered, worked flints are 

 found, which belonged to the same people, no doubt. It is, 

 however, beneath the soil, buried during the countless years of 

 the accumulation of the alluvial valley beds, not only that the 

 most numeroub traces of the early race are brought to light, but 

 also it is in these gradually-formed beds that we obtain a clue to 

 the order of the deposits, beginning with the lowest, and tracing 

 the successive accumulations upwards. Thus, while the surface 

 relics have been scattered and intermixed with earlier and later 

 remains, the alluvial mud has been the vehicle for the preserva- 

 tion and transmission to our own times of relics in the order of 

 time and place in which they were left. Next, then, to the 

 discoveries made in the British Barrows and in undisturbed 

 burial grounds, these deposits formed by the present rivers and 

 periodical floods are most important for records of facts relating 

 to the life and manners of man in prehistoric times. For the 

 last fifteen years I have been on the look-out for an}' excavations 

 going on in this neighbourhood. Among others, I learned that 

 for a long time — more than twenty years previously — Brick- 

 earth, for the purpose of manufacture, had been taken out at 

 Mr. James Brown's works at Skitts Hill ; that animal remains 

 and worked tools and implements obtained from these grounds 

 were in the possession of some few local persons, while, doubt- 

 less, others had been overlooked or allowed to fall again into 

 oblivion. I am able to say that during the period above alluded 

 to, every relic that has turned up lias been scrupulously pre- 

 served, and, through the liberality of one or two other observers, 

 and by instructions given to the workmen, all the recent finds 

 have come into my possession. It was at the exhibition of these 

 specimens (in part) at Braintree Vicarage, at the meeting of the 

 Club on October ist, 1898, that much interest was created, and 

 a wish was expressed that I should write an account of my 

 discoveries for the Essex Naturalist. 



The topography of the site and its surroundings is shown in 



