A SUPPOSED NEOLITHIC SETTLEMENT. 95
This is only one of the numerous patches of low ground in
Essex which were, in all probability, inhabited by man during
the stone-age. And this early race of settlers, judging from the
remains of their domestic animals and their manufactured imple-
ments and other relics, were probably in the same state of
civilization with the Lake-dwellers of the Continent, those of
Switzerland, Holland, and Brittany. It is not in the deep
alluvial beds alone that their relics are met with, but on the
surface of the land, everywhere scattered, worked flints are
found, which belonged to the same people, no doubt. It is,
however, beneath the soil, buried during the countless years of
the accumulation of the alluvial valley beds, not only that the
most numerous traces of the early race are brought to light, but
also it is in these gradually-formed beds that we obtain a clue to
the order of the deposits, beginning with the lowest, and tracing
the successive accumulations upwards. Thus, while the surface
relics have been scattered and intermixed with earlier and later
remains, the alluvial mud has been the vehicle for the preserva-
tion and transmission to our own times of relics in the order of
time and place in which they were left. Next, then, to the
discoveries made in the British Barrows and in undisturbed
burial grounds, these deposits formed by the present rivers and
periodical floods are most important for records of facts relating
to the life and manners of man in prehistoric times. For the
last fifteen years I have been on the look-out for any excavations
going on in this neighbourhood. Among others, I learned that
for a long time—more than twenty years previously—Brick-
earth, for the purpose of manufacture, had been taken out at
Mr. James Brown's works at Skitts Hill ; that animal remains
and worked tools and implements obtained from these grounds
were in the possession of some few local persons, while, doubt-
less, others had been overlooked or allowed to fall again into
oblivion. I am able to say that during the period above alluded
to, every relic that has turned up has been scrupulously pre-
served, and, through the liberality of one or two other observers,
and by instructions given to the workmen, all the recent finds
have come into my possession. It was at the exhibition of these
specimens (in part) at Braintree Vicarage, at the meeting of the
Club on October 1st, 1898, that much interest was created, and
a wish was expressed that I should write an account of my
discoveries for the Essex Naturalist.
The topography of the site and its surroundings is shown in