224
NOTES.
part of the series which in Suffolk passes up into the Chillesford
Clay. Subsequent writers, including Mr. Whitaker, in his Survey
memoir on Walton Naze (1877), saw no reason to impugn at any rate
the correlation of the clay at Walton with that of Chillesford,
although a note of interrogation is appended to it in the memoir to
signify non-committal of the wary writer to this (or any other) hypo-
thetical determination. Recently, Mr. Clement Reid (whose inves-
tigations of the Norfolk Forest Bed have set his mark on the literature
of that interesting deposit) visited Walton, and was struck with the
lithological similarity of the upper clay with some parts of the Forest
Bed series. In the absence, however, of any other data, he will only
say that he thinks it may be of that age.
I have yet a third hypothesis to advance, and that is that it is of
Post-glacial age. This occurred to me many years ago—in 1875, I
believe—when I had the mapping of the Clacton Post-glacial deposit
in hand.
This consists of bedded clays and loams, with abundant remains,
both animal and vegetable, all duly mentioned in the Memoir of the
Colchester district (1880). It passes eastward into a very thin band
of grey clay, between two thick beds of gravel, the lower of which is
assumed to be of Glacial date, and the whole of the gravel would
have been so considered but for this fact of the intercalation of
indubitably more recent beds. At Walton, clay of like character,
and containing, as I have said, a seam of peaty nature with fossil
wood, occurs at about the same level, and is overlaid in like manner
by gravel.
Given these facts, to find some shells or bones in the Walton
deposit, and so settle the question of its being Chillesford Clay,
Forest Bed, or Post-glacial—this is a problem that the geological
world may well look to the Essex Field Club to solve.
Otters in Essex.—On December 7th, 1889, John Mundon, employed by Mr. S.
Garrett, of Hoe Mills, Woodham Walter, caught a fine female otter in an ordinary
rat-trap. It weighed 21 lbs., and measured 4 feet in length. On December 13th
a male was killed at Colne Engaine, curiously enough of the same size and weight.
"Essex County Chronicle."
Vineyards in Essex (E. N., vol. iii., p. 90).—The Editor of "East Anglian
Notes and Queries" remarks :—" A Latin deed of the thirteenth century deposited
in the Public Record Office refers to the leasehold sale of a house, garden, shop,
vineyard, and premises at Colchester (vide 'Hebrew Deeds of English Jews before
1290,' ed. by M. D. Davis). A vineyard in proximity to a shop is a little singular,
at any rate it seems so to us now."