THALASSOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE NORTH SEA. 327 ' 



vagae as to speak of the same scientific data of Europe, or 

 Ameiica^ and it is high time to take the splendid researches 

 of the Challenger as the model upon which we must carefully 

 pursue our future investigations. 



I confess candidly to have glanced with considerable 

 complacency on Mr. Harmer's paper on the Geology of the 

 Eastern Counties. But on taking up this paper again, with 

 our mind enlightened by Prof. Hull's observations relating 

 to submergence of the British Isles, we have been brought to 

 agree with Mr. Ilarmer in his deductions, hoping even to be 

 able to show that they are capable of being very greatly 

 extended without poetry or risk of erring. 



The following are briefly some of his remarks on several 

 purely local beds of the Pliocene of Norfolk and kSuflfolk, in 

 descending order, and employing his terminology. 



Cromer beds.— Contain teeth and bones of elephants, 

 hippopotami, and other forms characteristic of southern 

 climate ; but likewise bones of the musk ox and glutton, 

 animals of nortliern fades, these latter probably indicating 

 more nearly the temperature then prevailing in Norfolk.* 



Weyborne Crag. — Contains arctic foi^ms of marine moUusca. 



Chillesford Clay. — Mineralogies lly characterised by great 

 abundance of minute particles of mica, as also are similar 

 beds in Holland, having been brought down by the Rhine 

 and Mouse, and derived, according to Mr. Harmer, from 

 Devonian and Carboniferous rocks. f For our own part we 

 think this to be erroneous, for we should attribute the mica 

 in such characteristic abundance as due to the destruction 

 of granite and allied rocks, gneiss, mica-schist, etc., of the 

 crystalline lower palaeozoic, archaic and intrusive region of 

 the Swiss and Austrian Alps. 



Norwich Crag. — Contains mica and Rhenish pebbles. 



Red Crag. 



All the Pliocene beds of Norfolk, says Mr. Harmer, contain 

 pebbles of lohite quart:, similar to those of the Rhenish and 

 Mosean drifts of Holland.:}: 



It is by the help of these incontestably southern mineral 

 substances that Mr. Harmer has traced the map of the 

 course of the Palasorhine, as far as it still lies above the 

 ordnance datum. 



Basing his arguments on the similarity of the fauna of the 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. Hi, p. 774. 

 t Ibid., p. 770. X Ibid., p. 770. 



