34 Mr. Henry Walker's Lecture:
But all this time the amateurs of our party are getting
eager for the sport. Enough of geology. What came they
out for to see, but an elephant or rhinoceros dug up entire !
They have read the wondrous story of the Tungoosian
fisherman and the mammoth on the shores of the icy
Lena; they have come prepared to assist at a similar
scene. They are on tiptoe to carry home some tusk or
gigantic tooth as a trophy of the eventful day. But our
cool and wary leaders are choosing their time. Before we
begin to make search for ourselves, it is well we should
understand the conditions of fossil-finding at Ilford, at
least as regards the larger ferae naturae of the district.
There is a "close time" for the game at Ilford as
elsewhere. In other words, the work of excavation in
these pits only goes on at a certain period of the year. In
the spring the ground is opened for the purpose of removing
the earth, which in the autumn is to be made into bricks.
It is then that important zoological discoveries are generally
made. In digging out the clay, the workmen come across
the fossil remains of elephants, rhinoceros, deer, and other
animals mostly of extinct species. These remains are found
in nearly every instance scattered over one particular floor
on which the great mass of tenacious brick-earth is depo-
sited. The perpendicular section made by the workmen
presents the appearance of a wall some twenty feet high,
often composed of layers of flat earth, deposited in hori-
zontal lines. Immediately above and about the spot where
these animal remains are found, the earth is denser and
richer in colour, and is generally arranged in a kind of
mound of some feet in thickness. The men are so well
acquainted with the indications which tell of the proximity
of bones that there is little danger of their destroying the
fossils in digging. The principal indication is a kind of fine
silver-sand, which is found powdered over the spot, and
which crumbles down more readily than the soil above it.
The last excavation took place some six weeks ago, and
then Sir Antonio was fortunate enough to secure five perfect
skulls of the great fossil ox, Bos primigenius (the contem-
porary of the British mammoth), with horn-cores complete.