214 SECTION OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. chap. 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 mai'k. 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 vege- 

 table 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 Ilappis- 

 burgh ; 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. Gunn, 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 alwaj^s 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 estuaiy. 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- 



