182
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
belongs to that series of Oolitic rocks known as the Oxford
Clay. Fragments of this rock occur plentifully in the Boulder
Clay of Essex. The large block from which the font was
sculptured presents some difficulties, as one rarely meets with
erratics of that size. Moreover, in the porch of the church
other large blocks of the same material occur. It may be,
seeing that most of the material of which the church is built is
local, that several large boulders occurred in contiguity in the
neighbourhood. The parent rock is distant over sixty miles.
The sculptor has had his difficulty with this refractory block,
and has very neatly pieced in a section where there was without
doubt a flaw, and the wonder is that he has succeeded at all in
getting such smooth surfaces. The rock is crammed with
fossils of which Gryphaea incurva is the most conspicuous. That
the work was done by a local man we think there can be no
doubt, for there are irregularities which would scarcely have
appeared with the professional man, and neither would the
professional worker have chosen such a block to work upon.
Its age, taken in connection with the blocks in the porch,
would appear to be contemporary with the building of the
church.—John French, Waltham Cross.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Bread made from Turnips in Essex in 1693.—In the
Philosophical Transactions for the year 1694, I find1 printed a
curious letter from Samuel Dale (1659 ?—1738), friend and
executor of Ray, addressed to Mr. John Houghton, then Sec-
retary of the Royal Society. It described a method of making
a kind of bread or cake from turnips, which was practised by
poor people in Essex at the end of the seventeenth century.
This letter is to-day entirely forgotten, and it seems, therefore,
worth while to reprint it in the pages of the Essex Naturalist.
The letter (which is described as an "abstract" merely) runs as
follows :—
Braintree,
Dec. 6, 1693.
Sir,—The dearness of corn hath occasioned many poor people to set then
wits, as it were, on tenter-hooks and to try many ways and methods of making
bread for the sustenance of their families, as, in some places, of pease and,
frequently, of barley. So, with us, they have lately got a way of making it with
turneps ; which, not only for the novelty thereof, but also because it may be of
1 Philos. Trans., xvii., p. 970 (1694).