Journal of Proceedings.
cxi
notice as one of the most disastrous cases of damage. The substantial
building was completely wrecked—the chimneys were demolished, every
wall cracked and twisted, the door frames displaced, windows broken,
and the garden wall thrown down. The party was shown the remains of
a starling which had been caught in a crack under the eaves of the roof
and so killed—a curious exemplification of the suddenness of the shock.
The " Stroud," a raised causeway across the Pyefleet Creek which
separates Mersea from the mainland, was high and dry, the tide being
almost at the ebb. The origin of the "Stroud" or " Strood" is
unknown, but it is probably Roman work. West Mersea was reached
at a quarter to three o'clock, after a somewhat dusty ride, and the
visitors alighted underneath the trees near the "White Hart," and par-
took with gusto of the refreshment supplied in this old fashioned hostelry,
which had suffered severely from the earthquake.
Naturalists and botanists will find much attractive material about
the Mersea coast-line. The sand and mud " saltings" support an
abundant flora, and a large number of interesting birds frequent the
district; in the " White Hart'' were seen many rare species shot by Mr.
Traveller. The island, and indeed the whole adjacent mainland, abounds
in traces of ancient occupation, old causeways, ramparts and entrench-
ments ; the numerous tumuli, credited to the Romans, are probably of
earlier date, and well deserve intelligent scientific investigation. The
wild beauty of the sea marshes and coast is well portrayed in the Rev.
Baring Gould's wonderful talc of ' Mehalah," the scene of which is laid
in Mersea and in the " Ray " in Pyefleet Creek.
After a short interval, the party assembled just outside the village
churchyard, and Dr. Laver made a few remarks on the antiquities of
Mersea, and its special physical features. They saw surrounding them,
he said, a great quantity of flat ground. This shore, which from a dis-
tance looked firm and hard, was mud some 18 to 20 feet deep, or even more,
and down close to the water at low tide—although it was perfectly hard
further out—it was impossible to move without splatchets, or large
boards, attached to the feet. The flat ground produced in great
plenty a grass-like plant known as Zostera marina, or Grass-wrack,
which a few years ago was suggested as a possible source of fibre as a sub-
stitute for cotton. They knew nothing of the island itself previous to
the time of the Roman occupation of it, but during that period
it was an important place. The site on which they were then
standing was formally occupied by a Roman villa, extending over the
whole of the churchyard, and noted as one of the largest Roman villas
discovered in this country. It was fully explored and described in 1740
by Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary to the Royal Society, who
found that the church was built upon it. When burying bodies in the
churchyard, they frequently laid them on a beautifully tesselated pave-
ment, although they sometimes broke through it. The placing of a
church on the site of a Roman villa was not an unusual thing. Numbers