100 In Memoriam: Sir Antonio Brady.
less decayed, and when perfect it was no doubt several inches
longer.....Owing to the kindness of Mr. Curtis
these interesting fossils were examined in situ by many lovers
of science, and on Saturday, February 21st, a party consisting
of Sir Charles Lyell, F.E.S., Mr. "Waterhouse, Prof. Quekett,
Prof. Morris, Dr. Elliot, and Messrs. Brady, Jones, Prescott,
Prestwich, and Thompson, with several others, visited the
spot and made arrangements for disinterring the fossils.
The tusk, we understand, will be deposited in the National
Museum by kind permission of Mr. Curtis. The party having
spent a most agreeable afternoon at Ilford, dined at Mr.
Brady's at Stratford, and finished the evening by examining
his cabinet of Natural History, &c."
So rich were these brick-earth fields, that every winter
fresh discoveries were made ; and when the 'Catalogue'3 was
printed, in 1874, the collection comprised nearly 1000 speci-
mens of Mammalian remains from this one locality! No
wonder Ilford became celebrated, and that the Uphall pits
were visited and studied by some of the first geologists in
England. Very considerable difficulty was experienced in
the safe removal and conservation of the bones ; having lost,
during their long interment, all the natural gelatine, they
were so soft and friable that they crushed beneath the touch,
and it was not until fresh gelatine had been artificially intro-
duced that the bones could be handled with safety. Sir
Antonio always acknowledged his deep obligations to his
master in the art of preserving fossil bones, William Davies,
F.G.S., of the British Museum,4 to whose ability and ingenuity
3 'Catalogue of the Pleistocene Vertebrata from the neighbourhood of
Ilford, Essex, in the Collection of Sir Antonio Brady, by William Davies,
of the British Museum, with an introduction by Sir Antonio Brady, and
a description of the locality, &c, by Henry Woodward, F.E.S., and
William Davies. London (printed for private circulation only), 1874.'
4 Full details of these processes, so necessary to be understood and
practised by future "Elephant hunters," are given in the following
papers:—"On the Preservation of Fossil Mammalian Remains found in
Tertiary Deposits," by W. Davies. Geol. Mag., vol. ii. (1865), p. 239.
"How the simii of the Mammoth was got out of the Brick-earth at
Ilford," by Dr. Woodward. Geol. Mag., vol. ii. (1865), p. 92. These
papers are quoted in the 'Ilford Catalogue,' and Sir Antonio Brady himself
gave a sketch of the modus operandi at a meeting of the Essex Field Club
on May 29th, 1880 (see 'Proceedings,' vol. i., p. xiv.).