240 THE LIBRARY TABLE.
burial ground of the settlement, but the more recent finds,
resulting from excavations further north, are not so associated
but are found in pockets (or small pot-holes) or scattered broad-
cast without surroundings of black earth or burnt material.
"We have in fact passed from the habitations of the dead to
the land of the living who occupied this unknown, unnamed
settlement in the Roding Valley."
I. Chalkley Gould.
THE LIBRARY TABLE.
The Elements of Agricultural Geology : A Scientific aid to Practical
Farming. By Primrose McConnell, B.Sc, F.G.S., Tenant Farmer,
Ongar Park, Essex.—(Crosby, Lockwood and Co. 21s. nett) 1902.
This valuable work is divided into fourteen chapters. One to iv. are
mainly oocupied with the origin and formation of soils, their mineralogy and
physiography. Chapter v. deals with drainage and water-supply; vi., vii.
viii., ix. and x. are concerned with formations and farming, and the evolution
of live stock occupies chapters xi., xii., xiii. and xiv
Many who casually turn over the pages of this book and note the vast area
from which Mr. McConnell's examples and illustrations are derived, may be
inclined to suppose it too deficient in local interest to be noticed in the Essex
Naturalist. But a glance at the preface will reveal the fact that the author
for the last twenty years has been farming on the London Clay in Essex, and
that he dates from "Ongar Park Hall," Ongar. It is therefore obvious, that
no persons are so likely to find his researches specially interesting as residents
in that county. And in the remarks to follow it seems best to keep in the
main, to matters of local interest, referring those interested in the broader
aspects of the subject to Mr. McConnell's book.
Our author (p. 31) complains of the apathy of the Government as to the
interests of agriculture shown in the case of the Geological Survey and its
neglect for so many years of the superficial deposits. But the public opinion
of the country sixty or seventy years ago was felt to be very unlikely to consent
to grants of money for scientific purposes unless they could be justified by the
strongest economical reasons, Accordingly the most weighty argument
put forward for the establishment of a Geological Survey, and, in its earlier
years, for its continuance, was the statement that a knowledge of the
geological structure of the country would at once check the making of useless
borings and sinkings and show where they might be made with success. In
this way immense sums of money would be saved to the country, while the
cost of the Survey would be comparatively trifling. Hence the Survey work
began in the mining districts of the north and west, and was carried on with
the utmost possible speed, so that its use purely as a business matter, might be
obvious to the most unscientific of politicians. This necessarily involved the