106 



In England that of Cromer, on the Norfolk coast, is perhaps 

 the best known. I have taken a section of it from Sir Charles 

 Ltell's *' Antiquity of Man." [See plate.] 



This bed occurs overlying the Chillesford beds, and Sir Charles observes, 

 "This buried forest has been traced for more than forty miles, being 

 exposed at certain seasons and states of the beach between high-water and 

 low-water mark. It extends from Cromer to near Kessingland, and 

 consists of the stumps of numerous trees standing erect, with their roots 

 attached to them, and penetrating in all directions into the loam or ancient 

 vegetable soil on which they grew. They mark the site of a forest which 

 existed there for a long time, since besides the erect trunks of trees, some 

 of them two and three feet in diameter, there is a vast accumulation of vege- 

 table matter in the immediate overlying clays. Next, above No. 2, we find 

 a series of sands and clays with lignite (No. 3), sometimes ten feet thick, 

 and containing alternations of fluviatile and marine strata, implying that 

 the old forest land which may at first have been considerably elevated above 

 the level of the sea, had sunk down so as to be occasionally ovei-flowed by 

 a river, and at other times by the salt waters of an estuary. There were 

 probably several oscillations of level which assisted in bringing about these 

 changes, dming which trees were often uprooted and laid prostrate, giving 

 rise to layers of lignite. Occasionally marshes were formed, and peaty 

 matter accumulated, after which salt water again predominated, so that 

 species of Mytilus, Mija, Leda, and other marine genera, lived in the same 

 area where the TJnio, Cydas, and Paludina had flourished for a time. That 

 the marine shells lived and died on the spot and were not thrown up by the 

 waves during a storm is proved, as Mr. King has remarked, by the fact that 

 at West Eunton, N.W. of Cromer, the Mija truncata and Leda myalis aic 

 found with both valves united and erect in the loam, aU with their posterior 

 or siphuncular extremities uppermost. This attitude affords as good evi- 

 dence to the Conchologist that those mollusca lived and died on the spot as 

 the upright position of the trees proves to the Botanist that there was a 

 forest over the chalk east of Cromer. 



" Between the stumps of the buried forest, and in the lignite above them, 

 are many well-preserved cones of the Scotch and Spruce firs, Finns sylvestris, 

 and Pinus ahies, some of the cones of the spruce having only the central 

 part or axis remaining, the rest having been bitten off, precisely in the same 

 manner as when in our woods the Squirrel has been feeding on the seeds. 



" The foUomng is a list of some of the plants collected from the forest 

 bed:— 



Pinus sylvestris, Scotch fir Nupliar lutea, Yellow water-Hly 



Ahies excelsa, Spruce fir Ceratophyllum demersum, Horn wort 



