XIII.
then broken off, leaving a splinter projecting beyond
the plane of the surface produced by the saw.
Our plate is taken from a photograph of this unique
specimen.
A vast interval separates this earliest human relic
from the burnt stone of the Lexden Post-Glacial
brickearth, which is unaccompanied by any other
trace of man.
The next point in the history of the race, of which
Essex has afforded evidence, would seem to be the
period of the salting-mounds found in the vicinity of
Mersea and elsewhere—a period much more recent
than that of the Lexden beds, but yet of vast
antiquity historically speaking.
Mr. H. Stopes, F.G.S., was the first to attract
scientific attention to these enigmatical mounds in a
brief note sent to the Archaeological Institute in 1879,*
followed by some remarks at the meetings of the Col-
chester Natural History Society, and at the
Archaeological Society's meeting at Colchester, when
Lord Talbot de Malahide and Bishop Claughton took
considerable interest in his communication. He also
read a short paper about the mounds at the Swansea
meeting of the British Association in 1880, which was
followed by a discussion, and has lately published a
more extended account in the Essex Naturalist. †
It is desirable to state, in the first place, that
"saltings" are areas of land between the range of
high water at spring and neap tides respectively.
Such land may be the denuded and weathered slope of
the material or which the inland area is constituted,
but more generally has been formed by the deposition
of mud from the tidal waters.
The coarse sedge, saltwort, and other vegetation
which spreads ever the surface of the mud as soon as
it reaches such a level as allows intratidal drainage
and evaporation to produce comparative solidity, not
only arrests all floating substances, but, by checking
the fall of the silt-laden waters of each tide, retains
the solid ingredients, and by these accretions, con-
tinuing for long periods, the mud rises in places
nearly to the high-water level of spring tides.
The Blackwater and the Colne, rising near each
other in the interior of our County, but following
widely separate courses from the neighbourhood of
Coggeshall to the coast, reach the sea at the same
point, between Bradwell and St. Osyth. In the angle
between them lies Mersea Island, an oval ridge with
*Stopes, H. "The Salting Mounds of Essex." Archaeological
Journal, vol. xxxvi., pp. 369-372 (1879).
† Essex Naturalist, April and May, 1887, whence the follow-
ing is condensed.