180
WHAT IS THE USE OF THE ESSEX FIELD
CLUB?
By WILLIAM WHITAKER, B.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., Assoc. Inst. C.E.
The above question has been suggested to me by a late visit to
Essex, profitably spent in walking along some of the lines of
railway now being made. That visit was certainly caused through
our President having seen one of the new cuttings, of which he told
me, and also duly sent an account to the Essex Naturalist (ante
p. 149), but even the most active man (to which class Mr. Holmes
undoubtedly belongs) cannot go everywhere and see everything, and
I should like to know why some other members have not noted
other cuttings and said something about them ?
What is now to be seen I have seen (or my colleague, Mr.
Goodchild, will shortly see), and I hope that he will also be able to
visit parts of the lines that are not yet opened up. Unfortunately,
however, I was too late to see the sections of some cuttings, which
have been soiled over. One of these, near where a new line branches
from the main line at Shenfield, from what little can now be made
out, must have shown a junction of Glacial Drift and London Clay,
and another, north-west of Rochford, must have laid open a bed
new to that part of the county—the fossiliferous brickearth of the
Thames Valley, with the shell, Corbicula fluminalis, now extinct in
England, and which I could see at one spot only, to the extent of a
foot in length by a few inches in depth, in which space there was
little else than shells, chiefly of that species. But for this occurrence,
I should have been unable to map the extension of brickearth here,
beyond where it has been shown on the Geological Survey Map.
One of the most irritating sights to a field-geologist is a new
railway-cutting carefully soiled over, of which no geological record
has been kept. The Essex Field Club ought to have saved me from
such irritation ! I had hoped that the President might have accom-
panied me along some of the new railways, but he was (wisely)
engaged elsewhere, so my feelings had no relief.
Many of the cuttings seen were certainly of no very great
interest, being simply in London Clay ; but there was a good deal of
variety in different parts of that formation, and I wish to get folk
to record every section that is made in future in the county, not
merely those that seem to be of special interest. The section
noticed by the President is, perhaps, the most interesting, for