The Ancient Fauna of Essex. 
8 
there. This tract was not disafforested until 1777 (17 
Geo. III. c. 17). Chapman and Andre’s Map of Essex (1777) 
is the earliest accurate map of this county, and shows at 
least a portion of the tract under consideration still covered 
with forest-trees, and styled “ Walthamstow Forest.” Indeed 
so late as the first Ordnance Survey Map (published in 
1805) the “ Lower Forest ” extended close to Maryland 
Point, Stratford. 
Turning from the written evidence of the Epping Forest 
district, it is of no small interest to ascertain what can he 
learnt from the unwritten records of prehistoric times which 
have been preserved to us in the ancient and modern river- 
valley deposits, the brick-earths, shell-marls, and peat, so 
characteristic of large portions of this area. Bearing in mind 
the former continuity and extent of Epping and Walthamstow 
Forests, and the very recent date at which a large part of this 
area has been enclosed and cultivated, we can the more 
readily understand how it has happened that such interesting- 
prehistoric remains as are here met with, only a few feet 
below the surface, have remained hidden for so many 
centimes, undisturbed by that most restless of all beings— 
Man,—to be unearthed at this time, when their interest 
can be appreciated and their significance understood. 
The best illustration of the remains of the more recent 
fauna of the river-valleys of the Lea and the Boding was that 
exposed in the district of Walthamstow, which, in 1868-69, 
was laid bare by the East London Water-works Company in 
preparing their large filter-beds and reservoirs, which extended 
from the Lea Bridge Koad in a northerly direction beyond 
Tottenham Railway Station, and occupied at that time the 
area marked on the maps as Walthamstow Forest. Their 
works in 1869 covered more than one hundred acres, the 
depth of the general floor nowhere exceeding ten feet; but 
the trenches made for the “ puddled walls” in the centre of 
the artificial embankments went down to a depth of twenty 
to twenty-four feet. The subjoined sections, taken by me in 
the summer of 1869, will serve to show the nature of these 
deposits:— 
