THE SUBSIDENCE AT LEXDEN.
ground close to the stream was affected by them, they would excite
little interest or attention. (Fig. 5). This landslip explanation
would certainly not be likely to occur to anyone looking at the
sections of Messrs. Fisher and Rutley, who both make the bottom of
the cavity much lower than the bed of the river. But, in the first
place, their sections appear to have been drawn from memory, and
memory, as regards the depth of an irregularly-shaped hole, into
which no descent was made, is extremely likely to deceive, as I have
myself experienced. It would seem, too, that the distance of the
cavity from the river tended to put both these able geologists on the
wrong scent, and prevented them from giving any real consideration
to the question of the comparative depth of the subsidence and the
river-bed, or to any explanation except one involving a vertical sub-
Fig. 5. —Diagram-Section from Cavity to River-bend (T. V. Holmes).
sidence, the result of a subterranean cavity. Now, there is satisfactory
evidence for lessening the depth of the sinking. Mr. Fisher speaks
of it as "about twenty feet." But the labourer who guided us to the
spot, and saw it directly it displayed itself, spoke of it as from fifteen
to sixteen feet in depth. Mr. A. P. Wire, an esteemed member of
the Essex Field Club (then residing at Colchester), has kindly sent
me the following extract from his diary bearing on the Lexden
sinking, which he visited a day or two after it occurred 4 :—
"Saturday, May 3rd, 1862.—To-day I went to see a hole caused by a landslip
at Lexden. The hole is in a field near the Viaduct. It is nearly circular, about
ten feet deep and sixteen feet in diameter. The surface stratum is shown. It is
gravel. I suppose it was caused by subterranean springs washing away the earth
underneath where the hole was."
On receiving the extract from Mr. Wire's diary, I noticed that the
date given was a year later than Mr. Fisher's. I then wrote to Mr.
Gurney Benham, Editor of the "Essex Standard," Colchester, and he
was good enough to ascertain, by reference to the files of his news-
paper, that a paragraph on the subject had appeared in that journal
4The evidence of Mr. Wire and of the "Essex Standard," was not known to me when I read
my paper on this subject on the 24th of May, though my conclusions then were precisely those
here given—T. V. H.