74 NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
woodlands. This would seem to indicate that the Gnorimus was
indigenous in the forest in the old days, and that the specimens
occasionally still found are natives to and bred in the county.
—William Cole.
BOTANY.
Euphorbia esula Lim. in Essex.—In the Flora of Essex
Gibson remarks in a note upon Euphorbia esula that the dis-
tribution of that plant on the Continent renders it not
improbable that it is to be found in Essex, but up to that date
(1862) there was no record of its occurrence. Since then Mr.
Turner has found it at Witham, where it still grows, as has been
announced in the Essex Naturalist. I now have to record two
other localities for the plant. Miss Harrison, of Great Saling,
during a field meeting of the Braintree Ramblers at Danbury
found it near Linguard Common, and a few days afterwards I
found it in a disused garden at Broomfield. It may, of course,
have been an escape in the latter case, but I do not know that
it is ever planted for ornament. It is interesting to note that in
neither of the localities in the county does the plant occur in
"woods," the habitat generally given in British Floras.—F. J.
Chittenden, Biological Laboratory, Chelmsford, September 1st,
1905.
ANTHROPOLOGY.
The Deneholes of Essex.—The Times for September 30th,
1905, gave space for a long and very interesting special article
under the above title. The writer makes full acknowledgment
of the researches of the Essex Field Club as recorded in the first
volume of the Essex Naturalist, and fully agrees with the
views of Messrs. T. V. Holmes and W. Cole, on the probable
object of the pits. He says :—
"It is enough to say that whatsoever may have been the original purpose of
these excavations, or the successive uses to which they have been put, no sane
man ever made them simply for the purpose of obtaining chalk.....It
follows that we are driven back into the spacious field of probability, conjecture,
and tradition. The chalk-quarry theory must clearly be discarded. If the
elaborate shape and similar design of the chambers were not enough to
disprove it, a dozen arguments could be added. Chalk-wells, sunk deep into the
chalk, in order to obtain pure chalk, free from 'pipes,' we know; but they are
believed to be modem, and the essence of them is that they should be deep in the
chalk, whereas these are deeper underground, but not deep in the chalk. Other
excavations in the chalk are known, near Brandon, on the borders of Norfolk and
Suffolk, at Crayford, Chiselhurst and elsewhere. But they are none of them