224 Letter from the Rev. W. B. Clarke 



Art. X. Letter from The Rev. W. B. Clarke, in reference to the 

 alleged occurrence of the bones of terrestrial Mammalia in the red 

 and coralline Crag of Suffolk. 



My dear Sir, 



Had I more carefully recollected the object 

 of your paper, which I alluded to in my ■ Note on the Crag 

 Beds' in the last number, (p. 162), I should not have given you 

 the trouble of stating your views, in which I fully concur, — 

 But noticing the list of "beds in which no traces of terrestri- 

 al Mammalia occur" I overlooked the preceding observations 

 respecting the distinction you have drawn between the Mam- 

 maliferous shell-beds of Norfolk, and the true crag of Suffolk. 

 Now you are not unacquainted with my views on the subject 

 of the distinction between Suffolk diluvium and the crag ; 

 for they are stated fully in my paper on the Geology of Suf- 

 folk, &c. read in 1837 before the Geological Society ; and an 

 abstract of which is given in the Society's Proceedings, vol. ii. 

 p. 528. I have there shewn, that the diluvium and crag are 

 not, as Mr. Lyell has supposed, of the same age.* I have al- 

 so mentioned the fact, that mammalian remains are found 

 where I have mentioned, at Walton, Felixstow, and Tatting- 

 stone ; but I have never assumed that they are of the same 

 age as the shells of the crag. I have merely supposed, that 

 whilst the crag yet lay beneath the waters, before the up-heav- 

 ing of that formation, remains of land animals, drift wood, 

 gravel, &c. may have been washed into the then sea, and up- 

 on the sand and shell banks, which I assume to have been 

 then formed, as now they are, along our coasts, by the action 

 of currents, &c. I have also pointed out that diluvial gravel 

 has been washed, in one instance, (at Stratford St. Mary), in- 

 to fissures of the crag, and there, apparently, been stratified 

 with it. Such I conceive to have been the case with the bones 

 I alluded to. Now, at Tattingstone, I have taken pebbles of 

 red sandstone, (which I still have in my collection), covered 

 with Balani, from the true crag, and which, there is no doubt, 

 are drift of the crag age : — and near them I found, in the pits 

 I mentioned, remains of what I imagine belonged to a Mas- 

 todon. How they came there, I cannot say ; — whether fallen 

 from the superficial beds of drift, — or drifted into a hollow in 

 the crag before the crag was upheaved, — which I imagine lay 



* The above observation of Mr. Clarke's appears to us calculated to con- 

 vey a wrong impression of the opinion Mr. Lyell has advanced upon this sub- 

 ject; for although he may have referred certain beds to the tertiary epoch, 

 which more properly belong to the diluvial, yet we think there is no ground 

 whatever for assuming that Mr. Lyell has considered, in an extended sense, 

 the diluvium of Suffolk and Norfolk to be of the same age as the crag. Ed. 



