NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 155
Further Notes on some Sections on the New Railway from
Romford to Upminster, and on the Relations of the Thames Valley
Beds to the Boulder Clay.—Our Vice-President, Mr. T. V. Holmes, read a
paper to the Geological Society on April 25th, under the above title, being obser-
vations supplemental to his papers in The Essex Naturalist (vol. vii., pp. 1-14)
and "Quarterly Journal Geological Society," for August, 1892. Mr. Holmes
alludes to his discovery of Boulder Clay on the new railway at Hornchurch, dealt
with in his previous paper, and describes the finding of more Boulder Clay close
to Romford during the deepening and widening of a cutting there. The Boulder
Clay was on precisely the same level as that at Hornchurch, a mile and a-half to
the south-east, and, like it, was covered by gravel belonging to the highest, and
presumably oldest, terrace of the Thames Valley system. A portion of the
silted-up channel of an ancient stream-course was also found in this Romford
cutting. Its relations to the Boulder Clay could not be seen, as they were not in
contact, but they were alike covered by the oldest gravel belonging to the Thames
Valley system. The author discusses the probable direction of the flow of this
stream-course, and the way in which it was superseded by the ancient
Thames. After noticing certain points brought forward during the discus-
sion of his former paper, he concludes with a criticism on the views to which Dr.
Hicks inclines in his paper on the sections in and near Endsleigh Street ("Quart.
Journ. Geol. Soc." vol. xlviii., 1892), as regards the age of those beds, asserting
that they are, in all probability, simply River Drift of the Thames Valley system,
and consequently post-glacial, in the sense of being later in date than the Boulder
Clay of Essex and Middlesex. Mr. Holmes has promised a fuller account of his
observations for a future number of The Essex Naturalist.
Mammoth Tusk near Chelmsford.—Under the heading "Mammoth
Horn," the "Essex Weekly News" of Nov. 10th, 1893, announced that the "men
in the employ of Mr. James Brown at his brickfield, near Lower Anchor Street,
recently found a portion of a mammoth horn lying on the top of the white
clay at a depth of between 12 and 14 feet. The portion of the horn measures
6 ft. 3 in. in length, and at one end is as large as a man's thigh." Mr. Brown
has kindly presented the specimen to our Museum.—Ed.
John Brown, F.G.S., of Stanway.—I have recently been reading
"Retrospections, Social and Archaeological," by the late Charles Roach Smith,
F.S.A. : and find the following note on the above geologist in vol. ii. p. 43,
being an extract from a letter written to him by Mr. Joseph Clarke, F.S.A., of
Saffron Walden :—
" Mr. John Brown was apprenticed at Colchester to a mason. He chose to
work as a journeyman until he could see an opening for himself ; he told me it
was the happiest time of his life when he earned fourteen shillings a week and
spent it all. I know nothing of his struggles, if he had any ; or of his efforts to
commence for himself. I only knew him when he had retired with a competency,
his last work being the hospital at Colchester. He had then purchased an estate
at Stanway, three miles north of Colchester, as he told me, to please his wife.
He most hospitably received his scientific and other friends. He outlived three
wives and left no family. Like Hugh Miller, whose soubriquet was 'Old Red,'
from his bringing to light fossils in the old red sandstone, Mr. Brown also im-
bibed a taste for the study of geology from the occurrence of fossils in the
material he worked upon."—Copied by W. Crouch, December 15th, 1893.