CHAP. XII.] ICENIAN PERIOD. 259 



In fact, at the time of the Cromer and Kessingland 

 " rootlet bed," it is probable that much of the southern 

 part of the North Sea area passed into the condition of a 

 broad plain of dry land studded with large shallow lakes, 

 like the " broads " of modern Norfolk. Such is the opinion 

 which Mr. C. Reid was led to form from a study of the 

 Forest Bed and its associated deposits ; and the follow- 

 ing remarks are quoted from his memoir : l " The large 

 number of mammals already known from the Forest Bed 

 seems clearly to point to a connection with the conti- 

 nent ; " but " both the fauna and flora, leaving out the 

 large mammals and other extinct forms, are curiously like 

 that of the ' broad ' district of Norfolk at the present day ; 

 and this, like the rest of the evidence, points to a wide 

 alluvial plain with lakes and sluggish streams, bounded 

 on the west by a slightly higher sandy country covered with 

 fir-forests and distant from any hills." 



It is supposed that this plain was traversed by a large 

 river coming from the south-east, as stated on p. 246, and 

 that this river was no other than a continuation of the 

 Rhine ; a view first suggested by Mr. Gunn in 1867, but 

 adopted and strengthened by subsequent writers. Thus 

 Professor Prestwich, writing in 1871, remarks that on the 

 table-land above the Meuse in Belgium there is a gravel of 

 very similar character, and though, according to Mr. C. Reid, 

 this contains veined quartzites of a character unknown in the 

 Forest Bed gravels, yet the general similarity of the gravels 

 suggests that they belong to one and the same system of 

 drainage. Mr. Reid himself suggests that the fragments of 

 Carboniferous slate and chert may have been derived from 

 rocks that " came to the surface as part of the old ridge 

 which Mr. Godwin- Austen has described," and as the 

 Ardennes are part of this ridge, it is difficult to see why he 

 should have any hesitation in assenting to Professor Prest- 

 1 " Geology of the Neighbourhood of Cromer," pp. 60, 61. 



