UNEXPLORED FIELDS OF ESSEX ARCHAEOLOGY. 131
than they possess now, and which had enabled them to cut their
present channels. Towards the close of this period their principal
deposit was that of Brick-earth, and it is in this deposit, lining
the bottoms of the present valleys, that these more recent
Palaeolithic implements are found. These Brick-earths at the
edge of the Alluvium (where only I have seen them excavated)
attain a thickness of six feet or more in places and appear to
extend for long distances along the valleys. This deposit in
addition to the Palaeolithic flints, which it preserves in an
unabraded condition, contains also the bones and teeth of
mammals and remains of other organisms, some of which
appear about that time to have become extinct. I am acquainted
with them in the neighbourhoods of Braintree, Dunmow, and
Chelmsford. At Braintree Mr. Kenworthy obtained a mam-
moth's tooth from the deposit, as also very numerous small flint
implements and flakes. At Chelmsford in the Cann valley
similar flint chips occur, and also a few implements. A
rhinoceros tooth is also quoted from the deposit at Chelmsford.
At Dunmow I know of their existence, but cannot specify any
particular examples. But the deposits, like the gravels, are
county wide, and are, all probably implementiferous. The clay
described by Mr. Christy at Wrabness (ante, page 102), in which
he found mammoth remains, appears to belong to this period.
Some years ago Mr. Worthington Smith, in Nature, described
an apparently contemporary deposit in the Hackney-brook, in
which he had found Palaeolithic and other remains. It was
there that I met with the term "New Palaeolithic."
The duration of this Palaeolithic occupation was long. The
remains were entombed before some, or perhaps all, of the
present Essex rivers had started on their courses, and the people
remained until the sculpturing of the valleys was pretty much
the same as it is at the present day. Indeed these vast
changes- do not cover the entire period of the Palaeolithic occu-
pation, for there was a time, uncertain but additive, that elapsed
from the moment that the implements were chipped to the time
when they were finally entombed. The other end of the series
has an uncertainty also, in that it closes in an obscurity which is
impenetrable, as we shall have to notice.
2 I must again refer the reader to Messrs. Hinton and Kennard remarkable paper for
some account of the closing scenes of this Pleistocene (=Palaeolithic) period (ante, page 87).