The Presidential Address. 15
The thin layer of clay and flints, covered with grass and
dotted with Juniper, Clematis, the Rock Meadow-Rue
(Thalictrum saxatile), the Pasque-flower (Anemone Pulsatilla),
and other characteristic plants, that overlies the Chalk, has
probably never within the period under consideration been
more wooded than it is at present. With this exception and
that of the maritime flats saturated with brackish water and
exposed to the sea-breeze, the whole country was on the
arrival of man almost certainly one unbroken virgin forest.9
This forest indeed, may even have extended to the very banks
of the Thames, the Lea, the Blackwater, and the Stour, those
rivers, as we gather alike from the submerged forest from
Plumstead to Grays, and from the Deneholes of Purfleet,
running perhaps at relatively lower levels, i. e., the country
not having as yet sunk to its existing elevation. At the com-
mencement of history, however, before existing embank-
ments, there is no doubt that the lowlands of the valleys and
estuaries of the rivers I have named were tidal flats, destitute
of vegetation, or producing only the Aster, Sea Lavender,
Thrift, Sea Plantains and Asparagus of our eastern coasts.10
Man has but slightly affected our maritime flora, whilst those
of inland swamps and fresh-water have been diminished
perhaps by his drainage operations ; but have been but
slightly added to through his agency.
The trees of this primeval Essex forest were the Oak,11
9 See "The President's Inaugural Address," by Raphael Meldola,
F.R.A.S., F.C.S., &c, Trans. Essex Field Club, vol. i., p. 8.
10 "Whatever may be the date of the mighty embankments which have
given its present form to the river channel, there can be no doubt that
they did not exist in the time of Claudius. Those vast tracts known as
the Isle of Dogs, the Greenwich Marshes, the West Ham and Plumstead
Marshes, &c. (which are now about eight feet lower than high-water),
were then extensive slobs covered with water at every tide. The water
below London was then an enormous estuary, extending from the hills
or hard sloping banks of Middlesex and Essex to those of Surrey and
Kent, with one head towards the valley of the Thames, and another
head towards the valley of the Lea."—Sir George Airy, 'Athenieum,'
No. 1(383 (1859.)
11 The Oak can be traced from the oldest post-glacial submerged
forests, and from Irish peat-bogs contemporary with the Megaceros,
through the times of Druidism to the age when our place-names mainly