534 Sir JT. H. Uoicorth— 



into a Lower Clay, consisting of a brown stony loam, and an Upper 

 or Chalky Clay, overlain by sands and gravels; but the sections 

 from which this attempted division has been deduced arc very 

 uncertain and doubtful in their testimony, and the best authority 

 known to me on the surface beds of East Anglia, Mr. Horace 

 Woodward, says of them : " Most of these sections show in the 

 same pit the sand tapering away, and then the two Boulder Clays 

 come together, and their separation is not a happy task." Again, he 

 says that in many places the Lower and Upper Boulder-clay are 

 identical in character. He further says that, while in East Norfolk 

 the brown clay maintains its character of a brown stony loam, further 

 west " the lower glacial clays become so like the Chalky Boulder-clay 

 that, from the evidence of pit-sections, they cannot be separated one 

 from the other." (Woodward's Geology, p. 507, and "Geology of 

 Country round Fakenham, etc.," p. 19.) This geographical 

 distribution of the two clays is at once explained when we map 

 out the beds underlying the Drift in Norfolk, and find that, in the 

 eastern part of the county the Chalk is still covered and protected 

 by Crag beds, and was not, therefore, accessible when the Drift was 

 formed, while in West Norfolk the Crag is denuded, as are the other 

 Tertiary beds, and the Chalk itself is exposed. This accounts 

 for the chalky debris in the one clay and its absence in the other. 

 Carvell Williams, in describing the surface beds of Lincolnshire, 

 says : "Near Weston, three miles west of Louth, are good exposures 

 of Hessle Clay banked against the Chalky Boulder-clay " ; and he 

 adds the pertinent question — " Does not the brown clay pass into the 

 chalky clay ? " Again, he describes at Bricket Wood, in Hertford- 

 shire, a clay as precisely intermediate between the Hessle Clay and the 

 great Chalky Boulder-clay, and adds, " It is clearly both." Again, 

 Jukes-Browne wrote a well-known memoir proving the connection 

 of the Lincolnshire clays with the Hessle clays of Yorkshire 

 (Q J.G.S. 1879, p. 397). 



Let us now pass on. With the post-Tertiary clays, as I have 

 said, are associated large beds of sand sometimes having a gravelly 

 texture, and containing seams of gravel and of laminated brick- 

 earth. These sands agree with the clays in containing the same 

 kind of erratics, and are treated by the orthodox geologists, who 

 champion an Ice Age, as glacial deposits. 



As is well known, efforts were made long ago by Binney and 

 Hull, working on different lines and coming to different conclusions, 

 to arrange the so-called glacial beds of Lancashire into three series. 

 Binney divided them into two sandy beds separated by a clay ; 

 while Hull, whose division has been more popular, into two clays 

 separated by sands and sandy gravels. 



To these sands and sandy gravels of Hull's arrangement was 

 given the name of Middle Sands, because they were supposed to 

 come between the two clays. This tripartite division has caused 

 much heartburning among geologists, who have found it impossible 

 to apply it to the great mass of the beds found outside of Lancashire, 

 or even within that county, and especially has the difficulty been 



