NOTES ON RECENT BLUE BOOKS, II. 137
there full of land-and freshwater-shells and plant-remains,
though of estuarine character at a higher level, as seen in the
cliff. Possibly a similar sequence obtains in East Mersea, the
estuarine passing down into a lacustrine deposit.
As to the extension westward of the Postglacial gravels, I
would include those of Tollesbury and Goldhanger. Those
ranging from Bradwell to beyond the Crouch were always
regarded as Postglacial, and the putting everything north of the
Blackwater into Glacial, except river-terraces, can only be
excused by the peculiar irregularity of the Glacial deposits of the
Maldon district in their sequence, nature, and surface-contour ;
so that level and lithological character became criteria of small
import, and all gravels were massed as Glacial, in default of
evidence against that correlation.
NOTES ON RECENT BLUE BOOKS, II.
Dr. R. J. Reece's Report to the Local Government Board upon
the Sanitary Circumstances and Administration of the
Braintree Urban District.
By T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., F. Ant. Inst., &c.
THE Blue Book with the above title was published towards
the close of the year 1907. Price fourpence. A like
Report by Dr. W. W. E. Fletcher, on the sanitary circum-
stances and administration of the Braintree Rural District, etc,
is noticed in the Essex Naturalist for 1907.1
There is a line in Dr. Reece's report :—"Geology—
The soil is London Clay capped by Boulder Clay.'' Now,
while the above line may serve as a very brief account of the
geology of the district around Braintree, it is somewhat
misleading as a description of the soil of the urban district. For
a glance at a geological map shows that Braintree and
Bocking (like the towns and villages of the district generally) lie
on the gravel and sand which intervene between the London
Clay and the Boulder Clay ; a position allowing a water supply
by means of shallow wells centuries before deep wells came into 
use. Indeed at the present day Dr. Reece remarks :—"Bocking
has no public water supply, and no sewerage system."
1 "Notes on a Recent Blue Book,"E.N. Vol. XV., 14.
K