GEOLOGY 



that there were giants in former days. The records of William Arderon 

 (1746), of Richard Cowling Taylor (1822), later on those of Lyell, 

 Prestwich, John Gunn, and more recently of Mr. Clement Reid, have 

 brought vividly before us the character and physical conditions under 

 which this variable series was accumulated. Although stumps of trees, 

 apparently rooted on the spot, have been noticed again and again, yet in 

 every case where attention has been paid to the particular nature of the 

 stumps, it has been found that they have been drifted, not necessarily very 

 far, but no single example in the main portion of the Forest Bed has been 

 proved to have grown on the spot. The Forest Bed itself is of an 

 estuarine character, the deposits being connected with the former exten- 

 sion of the Rhine. Beneath it and above the Weybourne Crag is a Lower 

 Freshwater Bed, which however is known chiefly from derived Pholas- 

 bored cakes of peat and clay-ironstone found in the Estuarine Forest 

 Bed. The Forest Bed consists of ferruginous quartzite gravel, sometimes 

 cemented into an iron-pan, with bands of laminated clay, numerous 

 masses and fragments of wood, mammalian bones and estuarine mollusca. 

 It is but 10 or 15 feet thick. 



Above the Forest Bed is a second or upper Freshwater Bed, marked 

 at its base by a soil — the weathered upper part of the Estuarine Forest 

 Bed — and this being penetrated by small roots is known as the Rootlet 

 Bed. It contains the only vegetable growth in situ that has been 

 noticed. Above it, and occupying hollows here and there, are lacustrine 

 peaty beds, which have been observed at several localities between 

 Sheringham and Mundesley. The well-known ' black bed ' at Runton has 

 yielded specimens of the giant beaver, Trogontherium, and other remains, 

 and in the equivalent Unio-bed at Sidestrand there have been found Unio 

 tumidus, Hydrobia marginata and other freshwater shells. 



The occurrence in the Estuarine Forest Bed of specimens of amber 

 and jet, derived from Eocene or Oligocene strata, has before been 

 mentioned. Specimens of them collected on the beach are sometimes 

 manufactured into ornaments by local lapidaries. One of the largest 

 specimens of amber which was dredged off Yarmouth weighs thirty- 

 eight ounces. Mr. Reid has observed that the amber is cast on shore 

 usually after easterly gales ; and he believes that both amber and jet may 

 be derived from a bed on the same horizon as the well-known deposit on 

 the Prussian coast, because the easterly dip of the Norfolk strata might 

 bring in Upper Eocene and Oligocene beds a short distance east of Yar- 

 mouth. Remains of insects and arachnids are found in the amber, and 

 these include an Aphis^ several flies and one spider.^ 



Evidence of the former extent of the Forest Bed has been observed 

 in the Happisburgh oyster-bed, three miles from the coast, where bones 

 and teeth of elephant were formerly dredged (see p. 24). 



Among the animal remains from the Forest Bed Series are the 

 sabre-toothed tiger of Machserodus (found also in Kent's Cavern, 



* C. Reid, ' On Norfolk Amber,' Trans. Norfolk Nat. Soc, vol. iii. p. 6oi ; vol. iv. p. 

 247 ; and H. Conwentz, 'On English Amber,' etc., Nat. Science, vol. ix., Aug. 1896, p. 99. 



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