xiv
Journal of Proceedings.
One difficulty which always strikes the observer is to account for
the number and variety of animals, the bones of which are found in the
Uphall Brickfields. The spot appears to have been a perfect grave,
yard for large animals, both tropical and boreal. Ilford was a ceme-
tery for mammoths, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, bisons, et hoc genus
omnes, in the old ice-age, thousands—nay, tens of thousands—of years
ago; and a cemetery for Londoners it was at the present day. Sir
Antonio believed that the facts could be explained somewhat as
follows:—England in the Pleistocene age was not an island, but formed
part of the continent of Europe. The Thames was certainly there,
and although only a tributary of the great river which drained the
vast valley now the North Sea or German Ocean, was a very large
and broad stream. The herds of animals whose remains are found
buried at Ilford occupied the whole territory so drained. There is
reason to believe that the spot where Ilford now is was at that period
the centre of a lake-like expansion of the river, bounded on the one
side by the Kentish, and on the other by the Hertfordshire, hills. The
river was, of course, not then confined, as now',. by artificially con-
structed banks. Bones were often found deposited before the cartila-
ginous connections had been dissolved, but it was impossible to believe
that all those large animals had lived and died in so small a space.
Although the remains were not water-worn, they must have been
carried to the Ilford brickfield by the same agency that deposited the
sand, gravel, and silt around them—namely, water. The main stream
probably entered the lake-like expansion of the river at or near one
corner, and left at another, imparting to the current a somewhat rotary
motion, which motion would tend to drift floating bodies towards the
centre. The heavier parts of drowned animals, carried along with the
stream, would be deposited near to the middle of the lake ; and when
decomposition set in, the heaviest bones would first become detached
from the carcases, fall off, and sink, whilst the lighter ones would be
carried further, and some perhaps become ultimately disintegrated and
lost. This would explain why so many heavy bones, tusks, teeth, and
skulls were seen together. The bones were mostly found in the sands
under the brick-earth, soddened with percolating water, by which
agency all the animal matter had been washed out, leaving the form
of the bone and "skin" (sic) perfect, but consisting only of the mineral
skeleton, and that in a very soft and pappy state. Their exhumation
is therefore a matter of great difficulty, requiring the exercise of much
skill. Sir Antonio gave a minute explanation of the ingenious though
tedious process employed in exhuming the large and extremely fragile
bones from the earthy matrix in which they are found—a process
rendered more difficult in the case of large tusks by the double curve
of those of the mammoth. The last tusk he dug up was over ten
feet long. We owed the method employed to the genius and skill of