NEW ESSEX BOOKS.
205
at Shelton in his eighty-first year and was buried in the church-
yard there. It is gratifying to know that his last years were
not passed in such miserable circumstances as I had supposed.
His wife died two years after him.
NOTICES OF TWO NEW ESSEX BOOKS.
Ye Olde Village of Hornchurch, being an illustrated Historical
Handbook of the Village and Parish, by Charles Thomas
Perfect. Colchester : Benham and Co., Ltd., 1917 ; vi.
+ 154 pp., crown 8vo.
Mr. Charles T. Perfect, of Weylands, Hornchurch, has
spent some years in collecting material for a History of the
parish ; but, the production of such a work being impossible
in present conditions, he has wisely decided to bring out this
smaller work. The use of the old-fashioned "Ye" in the title
is a pointless affectation which the reader might well have been
spared; but the book as a whole deserves all praise.
The most notable feature of the book is, perhaps, its illustra-
tions, which are numerous and excellent, representing practi-
cally all the ancient houses and other features of interest in
the village. The letterpress is, moreover, quite adequate for
its purpose, describing the ancient manors and their owners,
the church, the larger residences, the old cottages, the chief
industries, the local institutions, and so forth, together with
the history of all of these. The most interesting of the old
industries are the pottery, which seems to have been carried
on for a couple of centuries at least, though now extinct, and
the iron-founding business, carried on by the Messrs. Wedlake
from the year 1784 to the present day.
The interest of the book is, however, mainly, archaeological,
and this fact precludes extensive notice in a journal devoted to
Natural Science.
Birds of Epping Forest.—The London Natural History
Society has reprinted from its Transactions for 1916 (pp. go-
97), the Annual Report of its Ornithological Committee on
the Birds observed in Epping Forest during the year. The
Report records no great rarities, but it consists of a careful
and very detailed list of observations, arranged in diary form.