mergence of the land going on in the south of the island (see Archæological Journal, 1898, p. 275). When the Tilbury man became embedded in the sandbank the spot would be on a level with the bank of the Thames, but since then beds of river mud and growing peat, amounting to 34 feet in depth, have accumulated over the skeleton. This accumulation took place by the ordinary natural agencies during the process of gradual submergence. We know, however, that the action of subsidence ceased before the Roman occupation, as the Red Hills of Essex, in which are found both late Celtic and Roman remains, are scarcely above the ordinary level of present tides. The problem to be solved is, therefore, how long before the Roman period, or rather before the Bronze Age has it taken, under ordinary physical conditions, to accumulate the 34 feet of deposits under which the Tilbury man lay. It is impossible to assign a date that makes him later than the beginning of the Neolithic period.
Mr T. V. Holmes, who expressly examined the geological features of the locality, came to the conclusion that the skeleton, though very ancient, belonged to the Neolithic period (Trans. Essex Field Club, iv., 135). On the other hand, Mr Spurrell, F.G.S., whose intimate knowledge of the estuary of the Thames and its alluvium is well known, expressed the opinion that "the Tilbury man may have been contemporary with the mammoth." On the whole it appeared to him safer to assign the skeleton to a middle or transitional position (On the Estuary of the Thames and its Alluvium, p. 17). Mr Spurrell's opinion seems to me to be the most feasible explanation of the chronological horizon of the Tilbury man, who would, therefore, represent a later and a more highly developed population than either the river-drift men or the cave-dwellers.
Bury St Edmunds Skull.
In 1884 Mr Henry Prigg discovered a fragment of a human skull of the Neanderthal type in brick-earth, at a depth of 7½ feet from the surface, at Westley, near Bury St Edmunds. The fragment was greatly elongated, being especially developed in the occipital region, but too imperfect to give any idea of the general form of the cranium. It is figured by Mr W. G. Smith
