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quantities of charcoal and wood ashes, though occurring very irregularly; but I found no trace of coal in any shape or form. Clinkers in some places, were not only common, but almost abundant, and showed that great heat must have been thrown out by the fires that burnt them.

In only one instance have I heard of or seen a natural crosssection of any mound, and the position of this happens to be more readily accessible than any other that I know of. It is quite close to the high road from Colchester to Mersea, there consisting of a raised causeway, called the Strood, crossing the creek mentioned above as connecting the Colne and Blackwater. This mound is about five feet thick, and is intersected by a small creek much haunted by crabs. Of the little pottery it yielded, two pieces were Roman turned ware, the only occurrence of such pottery in my researches. There was also much cellular semi-vitrified earth and burnt clay, with impressions of the sea-grass, Enteromorpha compressa. This mound has also its upper surface left in a series of narrow stetches, giving evidence of cultivation during Saxon times, when that form of tillage was (I have understood) usually followed.

Mr. H. Laver, F.L.S., of Colchester, tells me that another mound, at Tollesbury, which I have not yet seen, was also tilled during this period, and, having been apparently abandoned to the sea, it remains. outside the sea-wall, still retaining the characteristic narrow stetches.

I have no idea of the total number of these mounds in Britain, or even in Essex, but it must be considerable, when, after centuries of destruction, eighteen still remain between Virley and the Strood, a distance of only six miles. I am told that they exist in Kent, along the wide rivers of Suffolk, on the Norfolk coast, in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Durham. Still, I suppose we have them in the greatest number and of the largest size in Essex, which is a matter of some importance if their complete and thorough investigation should ever be undertaken by any scientific society or individual. It is somewhat curious that they should be quite peculiar to our own coasts, and they are entirely different from the "kitchen-middens" of Denmark and Scotland.

Another curious fact in connection with these mounds is that they invariably extend quite down to the London clay, which clearly shows that the clay, at the time they were formed, was not covered by alluvium, or that the men who made them always cleared the site first down to the clay. When we remember the acreage they cover

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THE SALTING MOUNDS OF ESSEX.

this would be no slight task, and it adds to the difficulty in accounting for them, for if they are only the sites of saline the object of excavation where no foundation was wanted is a little obscure in these days.

A point worthy of notice is the existence of these mounds far up freshwater rivers, where the water is never more than brackish and often fresh, by no means the position suitable for salinæ in ordinary circumstances; and the absence of mounds on the open seaboard is singular.

It is very difficult to determine the original outline of the mounds. One in Mersea is fairly circular, with a diameter of about ninety yards, and several give indications of having been round, but as so many have been partially carried away for agricultural purposes it is of course quite possible that the original outline is in no case preserved.

There can be, I assume, little doubt about the antiquity of these mounds the chief questions are as to their origin and precise age. Two of them at least were cultivated during the Heptarchy, and possibly many others. One has yielded traces of Roman pottery, and upon another I picked up a worked flint scraper.

I have tried for some years to collect traditions and popular opinions about these mounds, and they vary greatly, as one would expect, nor do they throw much, if any, light upon the subject. Some say that they were Saxon or Danish potteries; others, that they were Roman brickyards. Others again maintain that they indicate camp-sites of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, who was so cruelly defeated not far off, or of Alfred the Great when stationed there to resist the Danes; while others assert that the Danes brought their dead to be buried there, and that the broken pottery consists of the shattered vessels of the departed heroes. All these fancies are equally unsatisfactory.

In the catalogue of the glass at the South Kensington Museum is the following notice: "In 1295, English records speak of the glasspainters being among the chief tradesmen, particularly at Colchester, where the sand is of a suitable kind, and the salt marshes would furnish an abundance of plants whose ashes yield the necessary alkalies." I quote this instance of an extensive industry going on in the marshes long ago, but I hardly think it has anything to do with the formation of the mounds, as they give many indications of being much older; yet perhaps it is a fact not altogether to be lost sight of.

SALTING MOUNDS

Two suggestions as to the origin of the mounds have been made to me. One by Mr. Dalton, F.G.S., that they were camp-sites when the surrounding country was densely covered with forest, except the belt between normal high water and the storm range of spring tides. The other by the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, of Danby-near-Zarm, who regards them as being the relics of numerous salt works, similar mounds having been proved by him and Canon Greenwell to have been the sites of old salt works at Redcar and Coatham in Yorkshire. Mr. Atkinson has seen both series and maintains their identity. His paper is published in the "Archæological Journal," vol. 37 (1880), pages 196 to 199, and is entitled "Some Further Notes on the Salting Mounds of Essex."

I am not, however, prepared to accept unreservedly this view of Mr. Atkinson's. Like many other theories it must be taken with a grain of salt, or, indeed, as many grains as a whole summer's evaporation would yield in the position in which some of these supposed salt works were placed if the rivers then were as fresh as at the present time.

At any rate the rude character of the associated pottery, the absence of any trace of metal, and the downward extension of the calcined masses to the London clay argue a high antiquity, higher than that of the surrounding alluvium, four or five feet in depth, perhaps higher than the change of course of the river, to which I have referred already. Vast changes have taken place in the outline, and perhaps in the drainage system, of Essex within the postglacial epoch (using that term as including the present age). The occurrence, at Clacton-on-Sea, of lacustrine beds overlaid by estuarine deposits now thirty feet above sea level, and of submerged forests of more recent date than these estuarine beds, points to important oscillations at a date at least posterior to the advent of man in Britain, even if we do not accept the alleged proofs of human workmanship in glacial and pliocene deposits.

On the outer edge of the Bradwell mud flats south of the Blackwater, there are seen after storms the remains of ancient brick buildings, exposed at low water of springtides. The deposition of mud on that coast is slowly advancing the saltings eastward, and in course of time these ruins may be once more within the area of dry land—a distant event, it is true, but one that will be more rapidly brought about if ever the old proposal to bring thither the sewage of London should be carried out. Meanwhile the facts of the existence of the

ruins, of their material, and of their present level are of great importance as bearing on the recency of the last submergence, and the question arises whether the "salting mounds" are not of anterior date to that submergence. If they were above high water at first (and the fires seem to prove this) and are now accessible by springtides, a sinking of five feet at least is implied. On the other hand there are reasons for supposing that a slow subsidence is in progress at the present time.

I will now describe the few specimens I have in my possession.2

I. Underlying London clay with charcoal.

II. Pieces of clinker or fused sand, one nearly equal to coarse glass.

III. A piece of black earthenware of very rough make, which was apparently nearly half grass before burning.

IV. Coarse pottery mostly an inch thick, red externally but black within. Some of the pieces are very full of impressions of grass (Enteromorpha) having evidently been held together thereby during the baking. One piece belonged to a vessel at least two feet in diameter. All is of the coarsest hand manufacture, none of the pieces showing a trace of the wheel; in fact, all the pottery is ruder and rougher than the earliest known British urns.

V. Four pieces of wedge-shaped tile or brick. These are of much better make, being of finer material and well burnt, apparently made in a mould. Three of them are of the same colour, red, not blackened in the middle. They are five-eighths of an inch square at the smaller end, but not having seen an entire specimen, or the other end of one, I cannot say what the full size may have been. The largest piece I have seen is two and a-half inches by one and one-eighth inch thick. This piece is not of the same material as the rest, but is made of mixed clay; very like an overburnt yellow stock brick made from London clay with a slight admixture of chalk.

The sites shown by red spots on this map [exhibited] (which consists of sheets 36, 37, 46, and 47 of the new six-inch Ordnance Survey of Essex) were recorded by my friend Mr. W. H. Dalton, when examining that district for the Geological Survey in 1874, and are transferred to this from his one-inch map as correctly as enlargement permits. The red spots on the map shown are not intended to 2 [Mr. Stopes exhibited these specimens when the Paper was read before the Club.-ED.].