Journal of Proceedings.
xvii
to attempt anything in the way of discussion. Many geologists had left,
but he saw they had with them Sir Antonio Brady. He was afraid, how-
ever, that it was too late for any real discussion.
Mr. Walker, in replying, said he wished to mention one or two facts
which had not yet come under their notice. The reference to the
Geologists' Association in connection with the Essex Club was very
satisfactory to him; he was an early member of the Association, and was
always glad to bear testimony to the work which it had done, especially
as it was one of the oldest of the London amateur Natural History
Societies—older even than the Quekett Club, for which precedence had
been claimed. None of them who met for out-door work in Natural
History could be ignorant of the great work of propagandism which was
carried on by the Geologists' Association. He was exceedingly glad of the
muster that day, because in these days the interdependence of the sciences
had gained such a recognition that no man could safely restrict his
enquiries to one branch. Therefore it was desirable that the faunists
and others who were not geologists should become so as soon as possible.
And as their excursions took them some twenty or thirty miles out of town
at a time, it was economy of time and opportunity to observe in more
than one department of Natural Science. In the field that day they could
pursue Entomology, and they could find many interesting plants, as well
as study Geology. He apologised for the curtailment of the programme,
and stated that he had been down there twice rehearsing the excursion.
He had been all over the fields at Little Thurrock, and had found there
about twelve feet of false-bedded sands, the most beautiful example of
that phenomenon near London; he thought that it beat even that at
Finchley. There they saw stereotyped in permanent form what was
going on in the Thames to-day—shallow-water deposits pitched down at
a low angle, and then denuded subsequently. They would have a very
good chance at Grays of noticing how the Thames once flowed in a valley
parallel to that in which it now flows. The false-bedded sands and the
elephant beds lay in an inland trough, a good half-mile from the Thames,
and the southern rim of that trough was just before you got to the present
bed of the Thames. There were the two cuttings side by side—two
troughs cut into the chalk. This accounts for the remains in the old
trough—the deposit of elephants and so on. The Thames had a way of
changing its course, and if we had not embanked it in these latter days it
would very soon have shown na that it did so. But we had now
imprisoned it and made it a canal. He did not know, he said, what they
had done to deserve a second lecture; he would conclude by thanking
them, and by saying that his reward had been the sincere interest with
which every member had entered into an examination of the phenomena
before them. They did not come out for a pic-nic, but to enrich their
minds. The man who learned his Geology simply from books was a very
poor thing, as they knew; but the man who came out to study in the
field, as they had done, made acquisitions which could be gained in no
c