90
NOTES.
and is estimated to weigh between 6 and 7 tons. The rock is formed of pebbles,
which have rinds of black, red, and brown, and admit of a beautiful polish They
are fixed together by a siliceous cement of very fine quartz sand, which, where
attrited, sparkles in the sun. I have never seen such large masses of Pudding-stone
and shall be glad to hear of like examples in Essex or Hertfordshire —
G. E. Pritchett, F.S.A., "Oak Hall," Bishop's Stortford, Herts.
Mr. Whitaker's New Work.—"The Geology of London and part of the
Thames Valley," by W. Whitaker, F.R.S., F.G.S., etc. Vol. i, Descriptive
Geology, pp. xii, 556, folding table. Price 6 shillings. Vol. ii, Appendices,
pp. iv, 352. Price 5 shillings. Large 8vo, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode,
1889.—This Geological Survey Memoir has lately been published, and we hope
to give an extended notice of it from the pen of Mr. Holmes in a future number.
It is well, however, at once to draw attention to an important work of one of our
honorary members as far as it bears on the county. The parts of vol. i. that
specially refer to Essex are pp. 83-85 (Chalk) ; 117, 118 (Thanet Sand); 168-170
(Woolwich and Reading Beds); 233, 234 (Blackheath Beds); 258, 262 (London
Clay); 270-280 (Bagshot Beds); 294, 295, 297, 298 (various Gravels); 313-320,
324-327 (Glacial Drift); 335-338, 409-424, 45°-453 (River Drift); 461-465, 467-
470, 472-476 (Alluvium); besides other references. In vol. ii. Essex Wells are
treated of on pp. 12-42, while accounts of trial-borings in the county are to be
found in pp. 250, 251, 266, 279, 289, 338, 339. The publication is also worthy of
note as being probably the cheapest work ever issued from the Stationery Office,
and is therefore welcome as a sign, to use the words of the editor of ''Science
Gossip" that the "crusty stupidity and niggardliness of our English Stationery
Office are giving way before public criticism...... Had Mr. Whitaker been
an American geologist, and had this volume been published by the U.S.
Government, copies of it would have been sent out gratis to every scientific journal
and society of note in the world. Our Government never sends out a single copy
even for review, so that, when our most scientific men have published their best
work, the world knows nothing of what they have done."
The Tilbury Man.—In a very interesting paper on the "Estuary of the
Thames and its Alluvium" (Proc: Geologists' Association for August, 1889;
vol. xi, pp. 210-230), Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell discusses anew the question of the
age of the Tilbury skeleton, which was considered by Mr. T. V. Holmes (" Notes
on the Geological Position of the Human Skeleton lately found at the Tilbury
Docks," Trans : Essex Field Club, vol. iv, pp. 135-148) as Neolithic, by Sir
Richard Owen ("Antiquity of Man as deduced from a discovery of the human
skeleton ... at Tilbury," Lond., 1884) as Palaeolithic, and by Prof. Prestwich
("Geology,'' vol. ii, 522) as "very ancient, but not Palaeolithic Man." Mr.
Spurrell is of opinion that the Tilbury man holds a middle or transitional position
between the period of the distinct palaeolithic type on the one hand, and the
neolithic on the other. "It is obvious that between the two kinds of implements
there must be an approximation somewhere, and if the question is unsettled, it is
merely for want of investigation. ... I see no reason why the evidence
of this approximation should not be discovered in the deposits of the estuary
I have been examining. ...To say that there is no passage between
the two leading classes is to say too much ; and it is assuming still more if this
necessitates the supposition that man was absent altogether during the very time
when the amelioration of the climate was in progress, which resulted in the gradual
improvement which has continued from palaeolithic times until now. . . . On
the whole it appears to me that the man of Tilbury holds a middle or transitional
position. In the case of the extinct mammalia with which he is to be considered,
we find that a few species, including the elephant, continued to live through the
period of deposition of the gravel and sand to its junction with the alluvium, and
some are found high up in the latter. I think, too, the Tilbury man may have
been a contemporary of the mammoth."
Vineyards of Essex.—The "East Anglian" for October contains the follow-
ing interesting notes on vineyards in Essex :—"The vine is said to have been
introduced by the Romans into Britain, and its culture in the southern counties of