28 Mr. Henry Walker's Lecture:
recreation. The hunting fields around us in Essex, Middle-
sex, and Surrey are changed indeed since elephants and
aurochs roamed wild along the valley of the Thames; but
the hunting impulse still remains. Huge bisons and huger
mammoths are now no longer slain between the eyes with
the well-aimed flint-stone, as once they were in more
arboreal times; but we, the hunters of to-day, still track
the giant pachyderms and oxen to their home. In old and
well-stocked zoological preserves we well know where to
find them, and spoil them, like our ancestors, of horns,
and tusks, and teeth, as perchance we shall to-day.
Our trysting place, this Saturday of June, has a name
that sounds anachronistic in narratives of mammoth
hunting in the valley of the Thames. We meet in
Bishopsgate. The railway of these late Post-Pliocene
times will take us to these well-stocked zoological preserves
of which we speak. Ilford, in Essex (only seven miles from
the Royal Exchange), is the spot at which we know our
game is likely to be found. But who are we, the hunters,
who assemble in such force at this rendezvous in Bishops-
gate to day ?
A goodly fellowship of London naturalists crowds the
railway platform. We meet with veteran geologists as
well as amateurs—the fellow-workers once with Buckland,
and De la Beche, and Sedgwick—with men
Who know the birth-rock of each pebble so round,
And how far its tour has extended,
—men who willingly lend themselves to teach and popu-
larise their fascinating science. How many Londoners are
really addicted to exploring the ancient geography of their
favourite City and its environs only appears on a great
occasion. The discovery of an old deserted bed of the
Thames, with elephant and rhinoceros remains; the finding
of a chipped flint hatchet, used by our rude Palaeolithic fore-
fathers ; a new revelation of the Glacial Drift at Finchley ;
a fresh "section" in the submerged forest-bed of Plum-
stead or Walthamstow—such incidents bring out the eager-
host, the old and young alike, in all their glory. Here