INTRODUCTION. XXVii 



Eed-headed Pochard (FuUgula ferinaj has been seen 

 during the summer months. On most of the large 

 estates, also, throughout the county, extensive lakes 

 and other ornamental waters, adorn the finely timbered 

 parks and pleasure grounds, a two-fold attraction for 

 the feathered race; and besides the rivers already 

 mentioned, the Wensum, Tas, Thet, Wissey, Glaven, 

 Nar, and Babingley, with a few smaller streams, and 

 one or two canals, constructed for navigable purposes, 

 permeate the county in all directions and fully mamtain 

 the reputation of Norfolk as a well watered district. 



THE CLIFF DISTRICT. 



To continue our survey of the coast-line, the Cliff 

 District, with its surrounding country, presents a 

 strangely different scene. The vdde expanse of sands 

 and shingly deposits are still there, but the sand-hills 

 give place to a long range of *^mud" cliffs extending 

 some twenty miles between Happisburgh and Wey- 

 bourne. These diluvial formations, for the most part 

 varying in thickness from twenty to a hundred feet, 

 attain their greatest altitude (about two hundred and 

 fifty feet), in the neighbourhood of Cromer, and thence, 

 rising or falling in like manner as they proceed west- 

 ward, are suddenly lost altogether beneath the deep bed 

 of flints on Weybourne beach. Composed chiefly of 

 consolidated mud and blue clay, with ^^ pockets" of 

 gravel, sand, chalk, or marl, their various " contortions" 

 have a special interest for the geologist, apart from 

 the richness of their shelly fragments and the fossil 

 treasures of the mammaliferous crag. Landsprings, 

 from time to time undermining the soil, bring down 

 huge masses on to the beach to be consumed at leisure 

 by the encroaching waves, and the debris thus carried 

 away and deposited again far out to sea, helps to form 

 those sands and shoals which render our coast so 



