NOTES ON ESSEX GEOLOGY.
265
Indeed, it is essentially to the ochre, and not to the fragments
of crushed red tile, that the band owes its colouration.
The origin of the ochre is discussed in the general report,
but it may be desirable to state here that the only explanation
of its presence I can suggest is that it was associated with the
ceremony of the interment. The association of ochre with
funeral ceremony is a widely-spread custom. Sometimes it
is used for painting the bodies of the mourners : sometimes
it is placed with, or over, the interment itself. It certainly
appears that some such custom is indicated by the evidence
of the Mersea barrow.
Immediately overlying the red stratum, a considerable amount
of wood charcoal was found upon the eastern side of the tomb,
the other sides not having been excavated. This is probably
another relic of the funeral ceremony, although it cannot repre-
sent the pyre on which the body was cremated, because the
red stratum, which underlies it, was itself deposited subsequent
to the closing of the tomb.
NOTES ON ESSEX GEOLOGY AT THE
LATTER END OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY, AND AFTER.
Being the Presidential Address, delivered on 28th March 1914.
by w. whitaker, b.a., f.r.s., f.g.s., etc.
I STARTED these notes with the ambitious intention of
making them supplementary to the five Geological Survey
Memoirs that describe the ten sheets of the old map illustra-
ting Essex.
These Memoirs, however, vary greatly in their date of
publication, ranging from 1877, in the case of the little Memoir
on Walton, to 1889, when "The Geology of London, etc."
appeared, in two vols. I have not had time to undertake the
task suggested ; but have had to limit my work to what has
been done after the year of the last named Memoir ; so that we
begin with 1890, and by doing this we are able to start with our
great Tertiary geologist Prestwich, in whose steps I have been
proud to follow.
Then I have had to impose other limits. Firstly by ruling