100 
In Memoriam: Sir Antonio Brady. 
less decayed, and when perfect it was no doubt several inches 
longer.Owing to the kindness of Mr. Curtis 
these interesting fossils were examined in situ by many lovers 
of science, and on Saturday, February 21st, a party consisting 
of Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S., Mr. Waterhouse, Prof. Quekett, 
Prof. Morris, Dr. Elliot, and Messrs. Brady, Jones, Prescott, 
Prestwich, and Thompson, with several others, visited the 
spot and made arrangements for disinterring the fossils. 
The tusk, we understand, will be deposited in the National 
Museum by kind permission of Mr. Curtis. The party having 
spent a most agreeable afternoon at Ilford, dined at Mr. 
Brady’s at Stratford, and finished the evening by examining 
his cabinet of Natural History, &c.” 
So rich were these brick-earth fields, that every winter 
fresh discoveries were made ; and when the ‘ Catalogue ’ 3 was 
printed, in 1874, the collection comprised nearly 1000 speci¬ 
mens of Mammalian remains from this one locality! No 
wonder Ilford became celebrated, and that the Uphall pits 
were visited and studied by some of the first geologists in 
England. Very considerable difficult} 7 was experienced in 
the safe removal and conservation of the hones; having lost, 
during their long interment, all the natural gelatine, they 
were so soft and friable that they crushed beneath the touch, 
and it was not until fresh gelatine had been artificially intro¬ 
duced that the bones could be handled with safety. Sir 
Antonio always acknowledged his deep obligations to his 
master in the art of preserving fossil bones, William Davies, 
F.G-.S., of the British Museum, 4 to whose ability and ingenuity 
3 ‘ Catalogue of the Pleistocene Vertebrata from the neighbourhood of 
Ilford, Essex, in the Collection of Sir Antonio Brady, by William Davies, 
of the British Museum, with an introduction by Sir Antonio Brady, and 
a description of the locality, &c., by Henry Woodward, F.R.S., and 
William Davies. London (printed for private circulation only), 1874.’ 
4 Full details of these processes, so necessary to be understood and 
practised by future “Elephant hunters,” are given in the following 
papers:—“On the Preservation of Fossil Mammalian Remains found in 
Tertiary Deposits,” by W. Davies. Geol. Mag., vol. ii. (I 860 ), p. 289. 
“How the skull of the Mammoth was got out of the Brick-earth at 
Ilford,” by Dr. Woodward. Geol. Mag., vol. ii. (1865), p. 92. These 
papers are quoted in the ‘ Ilford Catalogue,’ and Sir Antonio Brady himself 
gave a sketch of the modus operandi at a meeting of the Essex Field Club 
on May 29th, 1880 (see ‘Proceedings,’ vol. i., p. xiv.). 
