214 SECTION OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. CHAF. xn. 



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

 being exposed at certain seasons and states of the beach 

 between high 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 vegetable matter in the immediately 

 overlying clays. Thirty years ago, when I first examined this 

 bed, I saw many trees, with their roots in the old soil, laid 

 open at the base of the cliff near Happisburgh ; and long 

 before my visit, other observers, and among them the late 

 Mr. J. C. Taylor, had noticed the buried forest. Of late 

 years it has been repeatedly seen at many points by 

 Mr. Grunn, and, after the great storms of the autumn of 1861, 

 by Mr. King. In order to expose the stumps to view, a vast 

 body of sand and shingle must be cleared away by the force 

 of the waves. 



As the sea is always gaining on the land, new sets of trees 

 are brought to light from time to time, so that the breadth 

 as well as length of the area of ancient forest land seems to 

 have been considerable. 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 overflowed 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, during which trees were often 

 uprooted and laid prostrate, giving rise to layers of lignite. 

 Occasionally marshes were formed and peaty matter accumu- 



