258 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
The larvae of the Cinnabar Moth were found feeding on Ragwort in the 
quarry. 
When all the scattered members of the Party were gathered together 
a short Meeting of the Club was held in the pit, with the President in the 
Chair, when ( 
Mrs. Janet E. F. Howard, 
Loughton, and 
Mr. Bernard F. Howard, 
Mr. William E. Glegg, of The House, Albion Brewery, Whitechapel 
Road, E. 1, 
were elected Members, and one candidate was nominated for election 
at the next meeting. 
Mr. Newton then gave a brief account of the mammalian remains 
which have been found in such abundance in the Pleistocene deposits of 
the Grays and other neighbourhoods, and Mr. Thompson added some 
remarks on the physical geology of the district. 
The President gave an account of the more noteworthy plants which 
had been met with during the excursion. 
Tea was taken in the town at 4.30, and the visitors returned to London 
by the 5.35 o'clock train, after a very successful and enjoyable day. 
FIELD MEETING IN THE DAGENHAM DISTRICT 
(519th MEETING)-. 
Saturday, i8th September, 1920. 
In spite of continuous rain throughout the morning, which threatened 
much personal discomfort, having regard to the rough nature of the ground 
to be traversed, a faithful band of seventeen Members duly paraded at 
Dagenham Dock station at 2.5 o’clock, as per the circular calling the 
meeting. The object of the excursion was a botanical one, to investigate 
a rampant tangle of phanerogamous plants growing upon waste ground 
bordering the Thames River bank. 
On leaving the station, the party skirted the large sheet of water known 
as Dagenham “ Gulf,” or “ Lake.” 
Dagenham Breach, the last and greatest of several inroads of the 
Thames since the building of the river-wall, was occasioned on 17 December 
1707, by the coincidence of an extremely high spring tide and a violent 
N.E. wind, probably added to the neglect or ignorance of an unqualified 
marsh-bailiff, one Edward Osborne, who was in charge of the river-wall. 
Of small extent at first, but not attacked with adequate promptitude and 
fore-sight, the breach in the wall, which might have been stopped, it has 
been estimated, by the shrewd expenditure of ^40, repeatedly re-opened, 
notwithstanding various repairs, and was not finally stopped until 1721, 
after the enactment of a special Act of Parliament and the outlay of scores 
of thousands of pounds. 
During the repeated inrush of water at high tides not only was the 
Breach constantly widened and deepened, but thousands of tons of marsh 
soil, scoured out through the gap at ebb tides, formed mudbanks in the 
river and seriously interfered with navigation. By the year 1716, it was 
estimated that the drowned land occasioned by the Breach amounted to 
