256
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Swiss flowering plants, collected at Silvaplana in August last by Miss
Prince and mounted by her for the Club's herbarium.
Thanks were accorded to the several donors and exhibitors.
Messrs, Paulson and Thompson gave viva voce reports as delegates
from the Club to the Congress of the South-Eastern Union of Scientific
Societies, held at Rochester in June last. Thanks were awarded to the
delegates for their reports.
The President then called upon Dr. S. W. Wooldridge, who read a
paper, by himself and Miss B. R. Saner, B.A., on "The Evolution of
the Essex River-System," which he illustrated by a number of lantern-
diagrams and maps. A discussion followed the reading of the paper, in
which Mr. Hazzledine Warren, Mrs. Hatley, Mr. J. M. Wood and the
Honorary Secretary took part. On the proposition of the President,
the thanks of the meeting were warmly accorded to Dr. Wooldridge and
Miss Saner for their communication.
DEMONSTRATION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
(NATURAL HISTORY). (650TH MEETING).
SATURDAY, 5TH JANUARY, 1929.
By invitation of the Keeper of the Department of Geology, Dr. W. D.
Lang, a party of twenty-seven members attended a special demonstration
at the Natural History Museum on the large extinct mammals which
flourished in our county in Pleistocene times, and whose remains have
been found so abundantly in brickearths at Ilford and at Grays.
Mr. W. E. Swinton, B.Sc, F.L.S., F.G.S., kindly acted as conductor, and
was introduced to the party by the Hon. Secretary at 2 o'clock.
In the course of his remarks Mr. Swinton mentioned that the bulk of
the extensive collection of Pleistocene mammals from Ilford, which was
now in the Museum, had been acquired through the energy of the
late Sir Antonio Brady, a former resident of Stratford, and the
collection was a much esteemed one. He referred particularly to the
magnificent skull of Elephas primigenius, found at Ilford in September,
1864, with pair of tusks complete—the finest skull of Mammoth ever
found in this country—and remarked that the entire skeleton of the
huge creature, was present at the time in situ, but was broken up and
sold by the workmen to a rag-and-bone man before the skull could be
rescued from a like fate !
The demonstrator called especial attention to a most important series
of teeth of Mammoth, at all ages, all of which were from the Brady Col-
lection from Ilford. Remains of Grizzly Bear (Ursus ferox), Fox and
other carnivores, and of the large Ungulates, such as Rhinoceros tichorhinus
with its completely ossified nasal septum designed to afford support to
the large and heavy frontal horn, R. leptorhinus without this complete
septum, and R. megarhinus, the third of the species of Rhinoceros which
lived together in Essex in Pleistocene times, were inspected.
An almost entire skeleton of Wild Horse (Equus caballus) from Ilford,
remains of the misnamed "Irish Elk" (Cervus megaceros), the Reindeer
(Rangifer tarandus), the Urus (Bos primigenius) and the Beaver (Castor
fiber) were, with others, inspected.