THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 87
"Our knowledge of Essex Geology, due chiefly to the
labours of Prestwich, Searles V. Wood, jun., Prof. W. Boyd
Dawkins and Mr. Whitaker, has been augmented by the workers
of the Essex Field Club and of the Geologists' Association, and
notably by Mr. T. V. Holmes."
We were fortunate at a very early stage in our career to
have secured Mr. Holmes as a member and later as President ;
Mr. Whitaker was among our first Hon. Members, and the late
Mr. Searles V. Wood has been a contributor to our publications.
The first original observation in geology published by the Club
was by Mr. W. H. Dalton in 1881 on the Blackwater Valley
(Trans. II., 15) in which he made known as the result of a boring
for an Artesian well at Tiptree Heath the apparent existence of
a faulted undulation in the underlying chalk, which subject was
further developed in a later paper by Mr. Dalton in 1890,
entitled "The Undulations of the Chalk in Essex" and accom-
panied by a valuable map. In this paper the author dealt
incidentally with the question of the existence of coal under Essex
(Essex Naturalist, V., 113). Among the early geological
publications of the Club reference may be made to Mr. N. F.
Robarts' "Notes on the London Clay and Bagshot Beds at
Oakhill Quarry, Epping Forest" (Trans. III., 231) and Mr.
Searles V. Wood's paper "On the Sand-pit at High Ongar"
(Ibid. IV., 76) to which is appended a note by that author
relating to Mr. Dalton's paper on the Tiptree Heath boring and
suggesting instead of a faulted undulation a simple sinuosity in
the fold of the underlying chalk (Ibid., p. 85).
The deep geology of our County can of course only be
studied by means of borings, and here again we have been fortu-
nate in securing the co-operation of that most distinguished of
all authorities on the geology of the London Basin, Mr. Whitaker,
who has kept an ever watchful eye on the well-sections, some
326 of which he has recorded in a series of four papers published
by the Club between 1885 and 1895 (Trans. IV., 149; Essex
Naturalist, III., 44; VI., 47; IX., 167). Mr. Whitaker
informs me that since his last communication he has records of
some six dozen other Essex well-sections ready for publication.
The part taken by the Essex Field Club in developing
the geological knowledge of this part of the country is
also well brought out by Mr. Whitaker in his annual