102
THE "SALTING MOUNDS" OF ESSEX.
ruins, of their material, and of their present level are of great import-
ance as bearing on the recency of the last submergence, and the
question arises whether the "salting mounds" are not of anterior
date to that submergence. If they were above high water at first
(and the fires seem to prove this) and are now accessible by spring-
tides, a sinking of five feet at least is implied. On the other hand
there are reasons for supposing that a slow subsidence is in progress
at the present time.
I will now describe the few specimens I have in my pos-
session.2
I. Underlying London clay with charcoal.
II. Pieces of clinker or fused sand, one nearly equal to coarse
glass.
III. A piece of black earthenware of very rough make, which was
apparently nearly half grass before burning.
IV. Coarse pottery mostly an inch thick, red externally but black
within. Some of the pieces are very full of impressions of grass
(Enteromorpha) having evidently been held together thereby during
the baking. One piece belonged to a vessel at least two feet in
diameter. All is of the coarsest hand manufacture, none of the
pieces showing a trace of the wheel; in fact, all the pottery is ruder
and rougher than the earliest known British urns.
V. Four pieces of wedge-shaped tile or brick. These are of much
better make, being of finer material and well burnt, apparently made
in a mould. Three of them are of the same colour, red, not black-
ened in the middle. They are five-eighths of an inch square at the
smaller end, but not having seen an entire specimen, or the other end
of one, I cannot say what the full size may have been. The largest
piece I have seen is two and a-half inches by one and one-eighth
inch thick. This piece is not of the same material as the rest, but
is made of mixed clay; very like an overburnt yellow stock brick
made from London clay with a slight admixture of chalk.
The sites shown by red spots on this map [exhibited] (which con-
sists of sheets 36, 37, 46, and 47 of the new six-inch Ordnance
Survey of Essex) were recorded by my friend Mr. W. H. Dalton,
when examining that district for the Geological Survey in 1874, and
are transferred to this from his one-inch map as correctly as enlarge-
ment permits. The red spots on the map shown are not intended to
2 [Mr. Stopes exhibited these specimens when the Paper was read before the Club.—Ed.].