92 NOTES.
Gravel Pits and Ancient Pottery near Chelmsford.—There is a pecu-
liarity of the middle glacial gravel beds round Chelmsford which may be often
unnoticed, though perhaps not unknown to geologists. In most of our sections
there are two distinct gravels, the upper third, about, being very coarse and
mixed with red clay, which forms the best road material. This deposit is almost
unstratified. Between this and the underlying beds is very often a thin parting
of white clay, sometimes purple, or mixed. Below it are stratified sands and
pebble beds, much paler in colour, often white or pale buff. These rest on the
London clay, the surface of which, as far as can be seen—for the pits go down to
the watery stratum, and do not reach the actual clay—is torn up, and masses are
mixed with the lower gravel. In a pit on Danbury Hill there is now shown a
curious contortion, a quantity of London clay being brought up at a sharp angle,
and thinned out for some yards between the gravel and sand. The most beautiful
sections are in the two large pits on the Baddow road, by the "Beehive" inn, where
the two distinct kinds may be well seen, and the colouring is very effective. In
one place there is a huge mass of loamy sand, perhaps 30 feet long and 2 feet thick,
and which the men say extends a great distance across the field, which has appa-
rently sunk into its present position as if it had been the load of an iceberg. It
lies somewhat "on the slant," and the gravel beds are contorted at the ends
where it sunk through them. It seems evident that the loamy gravel and the
stratified sands and pebbles below had a somewhat different origin, the latter
having been so much more subjected to fluviatile action. In the pits near the
"Beehive" a good deal of ancient pottery is found. The other day a workman
showed me the fragments of a large pot, perhaps a foot across and six inches
deep, very rudely fashioned by hand, and scarcely baked. It was in a hole
about two feet deep, the bottom having burnt stones in it. In the pot was black
earth. In the other pit a number of fragments have been found, and one
tolerably perfect vase with a narrow neck ; some of the fragments were of the same
rude kind as the first mentioned. From the way some of them have been appa-
rently set in the ground, it would seem to have been a burial-place. Mr. Franks,
F.R.S., of the British Museum, considers the fragments to be Roman. In the
gravel pit* near the Admiral's Park, Chelmsford, from which came the fine
spear-head figured in an early part of the "Transactions" of the Club, the men
have lately been cutting through a section of a trench filled with black earth,
fragments of bones, iron, and pottery. The trench must extend for some distance,
having been cut into years ago, and bones found ; also, the men told me, an old-
fashioned pot, which, of course, was broken. A number of pieces which I
collected are thought to be Roman, or Roman-British. Some were fragments of
tile. The trench seems to have been a sort of ashpit, into which odds and ends
were thrown. It does not appear that the flint spear-head can have been con-
nected with this more recent collection. The proximity of a very strong spring
and the river Cann made it a suitable spot for an encampment or a permanent
dwelling. On the border of Mill Green, near Ingatestone, is a field in the bank
of which we found great quantities of pieces of mediaeval pottery, many of them
looking like the rims of Roman urns ; but as the rest is so evidently later, having
a very rude glazing, with cross patterns of white daubed on, it is probable they are
all of the same age. In a boulder-clay pit on Sturgeon's Farm, Writtle, I have
found bits of Roman pottery ; but there was a Roman villa, I believe, near the
farmyard, which would account for their presence.—Henry Corder, Great
Baddow, March 28th, 1887.
Food of Pre-historic Man.—Some curious evidences of the diet of our pre-
historic ancestors of the "stone age" were recently brought before the Odonto-
logical Society of Great Britain by Mr. Charters White. Whilst examining some
dolicho-cephalic skulls found in a "long" barrow near Heytesbury, in Wiltshire,
Mr. White was struck with the thought that as particles of food became im-
prisoned in the dental tartar, sealed up in a calcareous cement, and can be made
* This gravel is stated by Mr. F. Challis, in Essex Naturalist, page 16, to be "valley
gravel." It is, however, undoubtedly glacial, having its covering of boulder-clay in parts of the
section.