98 In Memoriam: Sir Antonio Brady.
Societies, the Iron and Steel Institute, the Social Science
Congress, the Sanitary Science Congress, Chairman of the
Inventors' Institute, and for many years a member of the
Society of Arts. Only the day after his death the Brighton
Health Congress opened, at which he had intended to be
present, having communicated a paper on "Prevention of
Smoke in Fire-places" to the Domestic Health Section.
He was an original member of the Essex Field Club, and
always expressed cordial approval of its work and objects.
He attended and took active part in several of our meetings,
and in July, 1880, conducted the members to his old hunting-
grounds at Ilford, where a most enjoyable afternoon was
spent under his friendly and instructive guidance.
Sir Antonio paid much attention to flint implements or
"celts,'' and possessed a very large collection of such objects,
many of which he obtained in Denmark, and more than once
made journeys to the classic grounds of the river-gravels at
Amiens and Abbeville ; indeed some of his implements from
the latter place formed part of the evidence in the celebrated
case of the fossil human jaw found in the old gravel-beds of
Moulin-Quignon, which was investigated at Paris by a com-
mittee of English and French savants in 1863. He was an
experienced traveller, having visited most parts of the United
Kingdom, the Continent of Europe, especially Russia, and on
three occasions he went to America.
It was soon after settling at Stratford that Sir Antonio
Brady commenced collecting that rich series of Mammalian
remains from the brick-earth at Ilford which has rendered
his name a household word among paleontologists. He
thus describes the beginnings of the collection in the Preface
to the 'Ilford Catalogue':—
"About forty years ago [he was writing in 1874], when
the Geology of this neighbourhood was not so well under-
stood, and when even the science itself was in its infancy,
the whole scientific, and, I may say, the religious world, was
startled by the discovery of the huge bones of some unknown
antediluvian animal of gigantic stature, in digging clay for
the manufacture of bricks for the Eastern Counties Railway,
then in course of construction. By the care of the late Mr.