23 



ABSTRACT OF A PAPER 



READ BY 



THOMAS HAZARD, Esq., 



ON 



SOME REMAINS OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA, 

 FROM THE NORFOLK FOREST BED," 

 28/A MARCH, 1883. 



Mr. Hazard exhibited at the Meeting two teeth of ex- 

 tinct MammaHa which had been obtained from the Norfolk 

 Forest bed, one of the specimens being a tooth from an 

 Elephas primigenius (Nicholson's Palaeontology, vol. 2, 

 p. 387), and the other a prsemolar tooth from a young 

 Elephas meridionalis (Nicholson ubi sup., p. 383.) 



The specimen first mentioned he stated was dug out at 

 the foot of the cliffs at Cromer, in Norfolk, the other 

 specimen having been brought up in a fishing net off the 

 coast of Yarmouth. 



He referred to the Norfolk Forest bed as being one of 

 the most interesting fields of geological research that our 

 country offers, extending as it does from Cromer, in Norfolk, 

 to Kessingland, in Suffolk (Sir Charles Lyell's Antiquity of 

 Man, p. 214) and, stretching for an unascertained distance 

 into the German ocean — its age goes far beyond the glacial 

 period (Woodward's Geology, p. 291) and it has been subject 

 to gigantic physical forces, having been successively sunken 

 and re-elevated to the extent of 400 or 500 feet (Sir Chas. 

 Lyell ubi sup). It rests upon the solid chalk and has a clay 

 soil in which a pine forest is found to have flourished. No 

 less than 20 species of Mammalia have been found to have 

 inhabited the forest (The Rev. John Gunn), and when its 

 subsidence produced sufficient marsh, the Osmunda regalis 

 with an appropriate surrounding of reptiles had an abode 

 there. From being a marsh the forest became an estuary, 



