NOTES ON ESSEX GEOLOGY. 265 
Indeed, it is essentially to the ochre, and not to the fragments 
of crushed red tile, that the band owes its colouration. 
The origin of the ochre is discussed in the general report, 
but it may be desirable to state here that the only explanation 
of its presence I can suggest is that it was associated with the 
ceremony of the interment. The association of ochre with 
funeral ceremony is a widely-spread custom. .Sometimes it 
is used for painting the bodies of the mourners : sometimes 
it is placed with, or over, the interment itself. It certainly 
appears that some such custom is indicated by the evidence 
of the Mersea barrow. 
Immediately overlying the red stratum, a considerable amount 
of wood charcoal was found upon the eastern side of the tomb, 
the other sides not having been excavated. This is probably 
another relic of the funeral ceremony, although it cannot repre¬ 
sent the pyre on which the body was cremated, because the 
red stratum, which underlies it, was itself deposited subsequent 
to the closing of the tomb. 
NOTES ON ESSEX GEOLOGY AT THE 
LATTER END OF THE NINETEENTH 
CENTURY, AND AFTER. 
Being the Presidential Address, delivered on 28th March 1914. 
By W. WHITAKER, B.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., ETC. 
I STARTED these notes with the ambitious intention of 
making them supplementary to the five Geological Survey 
Memoirs that describe the ten sheets of the old map illustra¬ 
ting Essex. 
These Memoirs, however, vary greatly in their date of 
publication, ranging from 1877, in the case of the little Memoir 
on Walton, to 1889, when “ The Geology of London, etc.” 
appeared, in two vols. I have not had time to undertake the 
task suggested ; but have had to limit my work to what has 
been done after the year of the last named Memoir ; so that we 
begin with 1890, and by doing this we are able to start with our 
great Tertiary geologist Prestwich, in whose steps I have been 
proud to follow. 
Then I have had to impose other limits; Firstly by ruling 
