14
NOTES ON A RECENT BLUE BOOK.
"Dr. W. W. E. Fletcher's Report upon the Sanitary CIRCUM-
stances and administration of the village of coggeshall in
the Braintree Rural District, and Alleged Prevalence
Therein of Infectious Disease ; also, incidentally, upon
Sanitary Administration in the Braintree Rural District."
[Read Febrtmry 23rd, 1907.]
By T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., F.Ant.Inst., &c.
THE Blue Book with the above title is the report of a
medical inspector to the Local Government Board, and
was published towards the close of last year. Blue Books, like
most other Government publications, still remain unseen in the
shops of booksellers, unnoticed in the advertisement columns of
literary or other periodicals (where we obtain information about
the most recent books issued by private publishers) and un-
reviewed elsewhere. This is the more to be regretted, as many
Blue Books, even when they deal only with a district no larger
than that now to be considered, contain much information of value
to adjacent areas, and are books for the consideration of house-
holders and ratepayers, not merely for the comparatively few
persons with literary or scientific tastes. It is therefore
gratifying to record that a short paragraph headed "Government
Publications," and giving the names and prices of those recently
issued, has lately appeared in the Times, though, as it usually
consists of some ten or twelve lines, and has no definite position,
it may easily escape notice.1
Dr. Fletcher calls attention not merely to the sanitary state
of Coggeshall, but to sanitary administration in the Braintree
Rural District. It seems therefore desirable, in the first place,
to describe briefly the geological positions of the towns and
villages of the district in which Coggeshall exists, as shown on
the maps of the Geological Survey.
North of the railway between Chelmsford and Marks Tey,
Essex consistsof a plateau capped by the Chalky Boulder Clay,
in which various streams flowing from north-west to south-east
have eroded valleys. In these valleys lie almost all the towns
and villages of the district, among them being Coggeshall. They
rest either on the gravel of Glacial age underlying the Boulder
Clay or on the Post-Glacial gravel and sand deposited by the
1 It is worth adding that Blue Books may be obtained from Messrs. Wyman and Sons,
Fetter Lane, E.C. or from Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode, East Harding Street, E.C.,
and that the price of the Coggeshall Blue Book is sixpence.