of Tertiary Deposits. 115 



the shore ; and, in dredging for oysters, the fishermen have suf- 

 fered considerable inconvenience from the number of elephants' 

 bones and teeth which become entangled in their nets. Mr 

 Woodward supposes that the grinders of at least 500 elephants 

 have been fished up off the oyster-bed at Happisburgh ; * and, 

 from the numbers which I have seen, I have no reason to think 

 this calculation is exaggerated. I do not now propose inquiring 

 whence this prodigious accumulation of fossils has been derived, 

 or to what geological epoch they should be referred ; it is suffi- 

 cient for my present purpose to feel satisfied that they are the 

 remains of beings belonging to a remote era, which are becoming 

 entombed, covered with the balani and zoophytes that now inha- 

 bit the German Ocean. These are facts which, I presume, will 

 not be disputed, and yet so entirely has the operation of exist- 

 ing causes in this respect been overlooked, that Mr Lyell fully 

 concurs in the assumption, that, in undisturbed stratified deposits, 

 the embedded remains must necessarily have existed contempora- 

 neously; and upon this evidence solely, important conclusions have 

 been drawn respecting the bones of elephants associated with the 

 shells of existing species of mollusca in a deposit in Yorkshire."! 

 The next point adverted to in the paper is the presence of se- 

 condary fossils in the upper or red crag. During the formation 

 of this deposit, causes similar to those now in existence appear 

 to have been in operation, and effects have there been produced 

 which exactly correspond with the author's deductions as to the 

 nature of the formations at this time in progress round some 

 parts of the British coast. This introduction of secondary shells 

 in the tertiary deposits of Norfolk and Suffolk has been detect- 

 ed solely by an attention to lithological characters ; and the evi- 

 dence derived from this source is no longer available when there 

 is reason to suspect an admixture of organic remains belonging 

 exclusively to rocks of the supracretaceous series. 



* A village on the Norfolk coast, between Cromer and Winterton. 



t That these quadrupeds, and the indigenous species of testacea associated 

 with them, were all contemporary inhabitants of Yorkshire (a fact of the 

 greatest importance in geology) has been established by unequivocal proofs 

 by the Rev. W. V. Harcourt, who caused a pit to be sunk to the depth of 

 more than 200 feet through undisturbed strata, in which the remains of the 

 mammoth were found imbedded together with the shells, in a deposit which 

 had evidently resulted from tranquil water LyelFs G*w, voL i. p. 90, 

 edit. 1. 



H2 



