HARDWICKES SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



A scrutiny of the sand at home re^'ealed Rissoa parva 

 and striata, and some small Cylichnas. I have also 

 found on this coast Scalaria Trevelyatia — Aporrhais 

 pes-pelicani, Rissoa ulva, Cyprtza Europcsa, Tornatella 

 tornatilis, Mya arenaria, Syndosmya tenuis, c^-v. 

 Besides these shells, there were numerous live crabs. 

 Corystes Cassivelaunus was in abundance — also Hyas 

 araneus and coarctatus, Portumnus variegatus and 

 Portumiis deptirator. Sea-urchins and star-fishes 

 abounded, specially Solaster endeca — together with a 

 multitude of beautiful marine objects, which I cannot 

 specify — all in that beautiful state of preser\'ation 

 which characterises the objects cast up on this long 

 stretch of smooth beach. 



W. E. Hey. 



THE NEWER PLIOCENE PERIOD IN 

 ENGLAND. 



THE following is an abstract of an important 

 paper read before the Geological Society by 

 Searles V. Wood, F.G.S. 



The author divided this part of his subject into five 

 stages, commencing with 



Stage I. The Red Crag and its partially fluvio- 

 marine equivalent. The Red Crag he regards as 

 having been a formation of banks and foreshores 

 mostly accumulated between tide-marks, as sho\\-n by 

 the character of its bedding. The southern or 

 Walton extremity of this formation, which contains 

 a molluscan fauna more nearly allied to that of the 

 Coralline Crag than does the rest of it, became (as 

 did also the rest of the Red Crag south of Chillesford 

 and Butley) converted into land during the progress 

 of the formation ; while, at its northern or Butley 

 extremity, the sea encroached, and an estuary ex- 

 tending into East Norfolk was also formed ; during 

 which geographical changes a change took place in 

 the molluscan fauna, so that the latest part of the 

 Red Crag proper and the earliest part of the fluvio- 

 marine (both containing the northern species of 

 mollusca and those peculiar forms only which occur 

 in older glacial beds) alike pass up without break into 

 the Chillesford sand and laminated clay, which form 

 the uppermost member of the formation. He also 

 regards the principal river of this estuary as flowing 

 into it from North Britain, through the shallow pre- 

 glacial valley of Chalk, in which stands the town of 

 Cromer, and in which the earlier beds of Stage II. 

 accumulated in greatest thickness. The forest and 

 freshwater beds, which in this valley underlie the 

 beds of Stage II., he regards as terrestrial equivalents 

 of the Red Crag ; and having observed rolled chalk 

 interstratified with the base of the Chillesford clay in 

 Easton-Bavent cliff, he considers this to show that so 

 early as the commencement of this clay some tributary 

 of the Crag river was entered by a glacier in the 

 chalk countr}', from which river-ice could raft away 



this material into the estuarj'. He also r^ards the 

 copious mica which this clay contains as evidence 

 of ice-degradation in Scotland having contributed to 

 the mud of this river. 



In Stage II. he traced the conversion of some of 

 this laminated clay, occupyiug sheet 49 and the 

 north-east of sheet 50 of the Ordnance map, into land, 

 the accumulation against the shore of this land of 

 thick shingle-beaches at Halesworth and Henham, 

 and the outspread of this in the form of seams and 

 beds of shingle in a sand originally (from its jaelding 

 shells in that region) called by him the Bure-valley 

 bed, and which Professor Prestwich recognised under 

 the term " Westleton Shingle." As the valley of the 

 Crag river subsided northwards as the conversion of 

 this part of the Chillesford clay into land occurred, 

 there was let in from the direction of the Baltic the 

 shell Tellina balthica, which is not present in the beds 

 of Stage I. The formation thus beginning he traced 

 southwards nearly to the limit in that direction of the 

 Chillesford clay about Chillesford and Aldborough. 

 The Cromer Till he regards as the modification of this 

 formation by the advance of the Crag glaciers into 

 the sea or estuary where it was accumulated, such ad- 

 vance having been due partly to this northerly sub- 

 sidence, but mainly to the increases of cold. Then, 

 after describing a persistent unconformity between 

 this Till and the Contorted Drift, from the eastern 

 extremity of the Cromer cliff (but which does not ap- 

 pear in the western) to its farthest southern hmit, he 

 showed how the great submergence set in with this 

 drift, increasing much southwards, but stiU more 

 westward towards Wales. The effect of this was to 

 submerge the area of Red Crag converted into land 

 during Stage I., so that the Contorted Drift lies upon 

 it fifty feet thick, and to cause the retreat of the ice 

 which had given rise to the Till to the slopes of the 

 Chalk Wold ; whence masses of reconstructed chalk 

 were brought by bergs that broke off from it and 

 were imbedded by their grounding in this drift, 

 contorting it (and in those parts only) by the process. 

 He then traced, in the form of gravels at great eleva- 

 tions, the evidences of this submergence southwards 

 and westwards, showing it to have increased greatly 

 in both directions, but mostly in the western ; and he 

 connects those gravels with the Contorted Drift by 

 the additional evidence of one of these marl masses, 

 in which he found a pit excavated near the foot of 

 Danbury Hill, in the London-clay country of South 

 Essex, and which hill is covered from base to top by this 

 gravel. The gravel which thus covers Danburj' Hill, 

 of which the summit has an elevation of 367 feet, 

 rises in North Kent to upwards of 500 feet ; to 

 between 400 and 500 feet on the Neocomian within 

 the Weald ; to 600 feet in North Hants (where it 

 overlooks the Weald), and also in Wilts, Berks, and 

 the adjoining parts of Bucks : to 420 feet in South 

 Hants ; to 540 feet in Oxfordshire ; to 400 feet in 

 Cornwall ; to upwards of 700 (and perhaps 1000 and 



