EXAMPLES OF GEOLOGICAL REASONING. 149 
But more remarkable still, at the time when these trees grew, huge 
elephants, rhinoceroses, and deer roamed over England, and strayed in the 
woods ; as we know from their remains being found in this layer in many 
parts of the country! The forest afterwards sank under the waters of a 


5° i=] s 
9 ODy yo 




CASS Se et ey SS SN ESS SL 
Fig. 82. 
A, Chalk. G, Coarse river-gravel. 
B, Forest bed, with elephant, rhinoceros, | H, Black peaty deposit, with shells, seeds, 
stag, &c., and tree roots and stumps. scales, and bones of pike, perch, and 
C, Finely laminated clay, with shells. salmon. 
D, Clay, with boulders, worn and scratched. |I, Yellow sands. 
E, Contorted clay and gravel. K, Drifted gravel. 
F, Gravel. 
lake, and remained submerged for a long time, during which the thick 
deposit of clay was laid down, containing remains that lived in its waters. 
After the clay, a new agent acted upon the country. As will afterwards 
be shewn, the British Isles were subjected to the action of ice, the high 
mountains being covered with great glaciers, while icebergs floated over 
the submerged land, carrying boulders, and grinding down the surface of 
the land over which they passed. Here, away in Norfolk, we have the 
débris of what perhaps had been grated and rolled from the peaks of 
Wales and Cumberland! Then followed the deposition of the sand and 
gravel marked E and F. We observe, however, that F, though appearing 
on the left, has been washed away from the right side of the valley. 
After this gravel was laid down, a great river rolled its waters across the 
country, and wore away the strata, till it formed the deep valley that 
occupies the centre of the section. The gravel of this great river is still 
seen at the bottom of the hollow at G. Then followed a period when this 
valley formed the bed of an immense lake, into which flowed streams 
bearing the vegetable remains that now form the peat H. In this peat 
we find the scales and bones of the fish that gambolled in its waters—the 
perch, the salmon, and that fierce water-wolf, the pike. After this lake 
dried up, the sea flowed in, and the old river-valley became a bay or 
gulf, with its yellow sand I, and gravel K. These have subsequentiy 
been scooped out by streams, as shewn by the bend in the surface. We 
have, at last, reached the present time, when Norfolk was raised above the 
ocean, whose ancient bed is now trodden by the farmers and children of 
that fertile county. 
