LOCAL FEATURES. 13 



in the Harleston district, and is very limited in extent. It 

 flanks the hill-side north of the Waveney from Homersfield 

 Station up the valley of the Den ton stream as far as the Beck 

 Gate, and also appears on the escarpment- known as the Bath 

 Hills, Ditchingham. To the same formation may perhaps be 

 referred the narrow strip of gravelly sand which forms the 

 steep bank of Flixton Long Plantation, and beds of a tawny 

 sand visible on the slope north of Harleston Bridge and 

 occasionally in the fioor of the Allotment Pit to the west. 

 It abounds in fragments of shells, and is sometimes dug for 

 paths. 



No. 6. Pebbly Beds. These include formations lying be- 

 tween the Crag and Glacial series, and possessing various local 

 peculiarities. The chief section in the district is obtained in 

 the Withersdale and adjacent valleys. A clayey bed, visible 

 at the Cross Roads, is referred by Mr. H. B. Woodward * to 

 the Chillesford formation, which is placed at the top of the 

 Crag series ; but a pit sunk a little time ago below this clay 

 pierced a bed of sand full of smooth round pebbles of equal 

 size, bearing a close resemblance to the Westleton Pebble Bed. 



The Upper Crag and Pebbly formations are supposed to 

 have been effected in a shallow sea at the mouth of a large 

 river. As before said, they form but a small part of the 

 features of the neighbourhood, which are almost entirely con- 

 fined to the clays, gravels, and sands of the Glacial series. 



The Glacial fan nations consist of beds of drift borne down 

 from previously existing rocks by the action of ice. They are 

 rendered particularly interesting by the proof which their 

 composite nature affords of the altered climatic conditions 

 of our temperate zone during the period of their deposition. 

 Stones and boulders of a considerable size, oftentimes scratched 

 and worn by long travel and the friction of the moving ice, are 

 found resting in confused masses of sand and clay, with fossil 

 remains of earlier ages. Some of these erratic blocks show, by 

 their mineral composition, that they have been transported 

 from the mountains of northern Europe, probably by the great 

 Scandinavian ice-sheet, which filled the German Ocean at this 

 time, and deposited its burden on the shores of Norfolk, as 

 well as over parts of Denmark and Germany. 



By far the larger portion, however, of the East Anglian 

 drift has been derived by the action of land-ice from the rocks 

 of Scotland and northern England, with a preponderance of 

 chalk from the adjacent cretaceous formations. Among the 

 rocks represented in this drift are the white sandstone and 

 carboniferous limestone of the Pennine chain ; the magnesian 



* Geology of England and Wales, p. 467. 



