ad 
418 
merchant or invader could penetrate from the estuary 
into the valley of the Thames ; and in its earlier days, 
before the great changes wrought by the embankment of 
the Romans, this was also the first point at which any 
rising ground for the site of such a town presented itself 
on either shore of the river. Nowhere has the hand of 
man moulded ground into shapes more strangely con- 
trasted with its natural form than on the site of London. 
Even as late as the time of Caesar the soil which a large 
part of it covers can have been little but a vast morass. 
Below Fulham the river stretched at high tide over the 
ground that lies on either side of its present channel from 
the rises of Kensington and Hyde Park to the opposite 
shores of Peckham and Camberwell. All Pimlico and 
Westminster to the north, to the south all Battersea and 
Lambeth, all Newington and Kennington, all Bermondsey 
and Rotherithe, formed a vast lagoon, broken only by 
little rises which became the “eyes” and “hithes,’’ the 
“fislands’’ and. “landing-rises,”’ of later settlements. 
Yet lower down to the eastward the swamp widened as 
the Lea poured its waters into the Thames in an estuary 
of its own, an estuary which ran far to the north oyer as 
wide an expanse of marsh and fen, while at its mouth it 
stretched its tidal waters over the mud flats which have 
been turned by embankment into the Isleof Dogs. Near 
- the point where the two rivers meet, a traveller who was 
mounting the Thames from the sea saw the first dry 
land to which his bark could steer. The spot was 
in fact the extremity of a low line of rising ground 
which was thrown out from the heights of Hamp- 
stead that border the river valley to the north, 
and which passed over the sites of our Hyde Park 
and Holborn to thrust itself on the east into the 
great morass. This eastern portion of it, however, 
was severed from the rest of the rise by the deep 
gorge of a stream that fell from the northern hills, the 
stream of the Fleet, whose waters, long since lost in 
London sewers, ran in earlier days between steep banks— 
banks that still leave their impress in the local levels, and 
in local names like Snow Hill—to the Thames at Black- 
friars. The rise or ‘dun’ that stretched from this tidal 
channel of the Fleet to the spot now marked by the 
Tower, and which was destined to become the site of 
London, rose at its highest some fifty feet above the level 
of the tide, and was broken into two parts bya ravine 
through which ran the stream which has since been known 
as the Wallbrook. Such a position was admirably adapted 
for defence ; it was indeed almost impregnable. Shel- 
tered to east and south by the Lagoons of the Lea and 
the Thames, guarded to westward by the deep cleft of the 
Fleet, it saw stretching along its northern border the 
broad fen whose name has survived in our modern Moor- 
gate. Nor, asthe first point at which merchants could 
land from the great river, was the spot less adapted for 
trade. But it was long before the trader found dwelling 
on its soil. Old as it is, London is far from being one of 
the oldest of British cities; till the coming of the Romans, 
indeed, the loneliness of its site seems to have been un- 
broken by any settlement whatever. The ‘dun’ was in 
fact the centre of a vast wilderness. Beyondthe marshes 
to the east lay the forest track of southern Essex. Across 
the lagoon to the south rose the woodlands of Sydenham 
and Forest Hill, themselves but advance guards of the 
fastnesses of the Weald. ‘To the north the heights of 
Highgate and Hampstead were crowned with forest- 
masses, through which the boar and the wild ox wan- 
dered without fear of man down to the days of the 
Plantagenets. Even the open country to the west was 
but a waste. It seems to have formed the border-land 
between two British tribes who dwelt in Hertford and in 
Essex, andits barren clays were given over to solitude by 
the usages of primeval war.” 
Much more that must be of interest to those familiar | 
with modern London does Mr. Green tell us about the 
NAT URE 
early city and its progress, and the influence upon it 
history, of its site, and the nature of the surrounding 
country. But these extracts will give the reader a fair 
idea of the method pursued by Mr. Green in this most 
interesting volume. The work contains numerous maps 
showing the condition of the surface in the various 
regions of the country at the time that the Saxons, Jutes, 
and Angles were with ruthless vigour laying the founda- 
tion of modern England and modern English history. 
Mr. Green, of course, discusses many incidental questions 
of interest, among others the extent to which the Celtic 
element remained after the settlement of the invaders, and 
influenced their blood and their character. Mr. Green — 
essentially adopts the views advocated by Mr. Freeman, 
though his Teutonism does not appear to us to be quite 
so extreme. He brings his history down to about the ~ 
year 830, when it may be said that England was roughly 
shaped into those outlines, topographical and social, of 
which the present conditions are the lineal development. 
AT a recent meeting of the Trustees of the Lewes Studentship 
in Physiology, which was founded by the late ‘‘ George Eliot” 
in memory of her husband, Mr. George Henry Lewes, the 
vacancy occasioned by the appointment of Dr. Roy to the Brown 
Professorship of Pathology in the University of London was 
filled up, according to the terms of the Trust, by the election of 
Mr. L. C, Wooldridge, D.Sc. (Lond.). Dr. Wooldridge is a 
former student of Guy’s Hospital, who has lately been working 
in Prof. Ludwig’s laboratory at Leipzig. He has already made 
investigations of importance, one of which, on the part taken by 
the white corpuscles in the coagulation of the blood, has been 
read before the Royal Society. The studentship is for three 
years, and its conditions provide for the holder devoting himself 
during that time to physiological researches. Wisely administered, 
such endowments of research are invaluable, and it is to be 
wished that there were more of them. The first appointment 
of the Trustees led to the brilliant work of Prof. Roy, and we 
do not doubt that their present choice will be no less amply 
justified. 4 
THE expedition to be fitted out at the expense of M, Bischofis- 
heim to observe the solar eclipse next May in Egypt, will include 
M. Perrotin, director of the Nice Observatory, who will attend — 
specially to the search for intra-Mercurial planets, and M. 
Thollon, who will have charge of the spectroscopic work. They 
will be accompanied by M. Guérain, photographer to the Paris 
Observatory. 
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NOTES | 
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’ 
THE collection of fossil fishes in the British Museum has 
lately received an immense addition by the transference from 
Florence Court to the new museum at Cromwell Road of the 
very extensive and important collection of the Earl of Ennis- 
killen, and when in the course of a few weeks it receives the col- 
lection of the late Sir P. G, Egerton, which the Trustees have 
also purchased, the museum will contain a probably unrivalled 
collection of fossil fish. The collections of the late Sir P. G. 
Egerton and of the Earl of Enniskillen were commenced in 
1826, when they were fellow-students at Oxford. 
THE first annual general meeting of the Sanitary Protection 
Association was held on Saturday in the rooms of the Society of 
Arts in the Adelphi. Prof. Huxley, having read the re- 
port, pointed out that the Society, though it had only. 
been in existence for a short time, had worked successfully. 
The houses examined had not been the dwellings of poor 
people, and therefore liable to be found in an insani- 
tary condition, but had been houses occupied by well-to-do 
people, and of these 6 per cent. were in an absolutely pestif- 
erous condition, leaving it to be the merest chance that they 
