H. B. Woodward— The Westkton Beds. 27 



gallery, to creep on all fours through a contracted passage to larger 

 chambers, there to superintend by torchlight, week after week and 

 year after year, the workmen who were breaking through the 

 stalagmitic crust, as hard as marble, in order to remove piece by 

 piece the underlying bone-breccia, nearly as hard ; to stand for hours 

 with one's feet in the mud, and with water dripping from the roof 

 on one's head, in order to mark the position and guard against the 

 loss of each single bone of a skeleton ; and at length, after finding 

 leisure, strength, and courage for all these operations, to look 

 forward as the fruits of one's labour, to the publication of unwelcome 

 intelligence, opposed to the prepossessions of the scientific as well as 

 of the unscientific public ; — when these circumstances are taken into 

 account, we need scarcely wonder, not only that a passing traveller 

 failed to stop and scrutinize the evidence, but that a quarter of 

 a century should have elapsed before even the neighbouring 

 professors of the University of Liege came forth to vindicate the 

 truthfulness of their indefatigable and clear-sighted countryman." 

 That is a handsome reparation, but it came long after Schmerling 

 had gone away to other hunting-grounds. He died in 1836, a poor 

 and disappointed man. Let us all take our hats ofi" to him ! 



IV. — FuETHEK Note on the Westleton Beds.' 

 By Horace B. Woodward, F.R.S. 



rpHE view expressed in 1882 that the Westleton Beds of 

 J. Westleton, in Suffolk, form part of the Middle Glacial division 

 of S. V. Wood, jun., was strengthened by observations made at 

 Southwold in 1895, and is supported by sections examined last year 

 near Lowestoft.^ 



In Prestwich's original description of the " Westleton Sands and 

 Shingle," he remarked that " they attain a thickness of from 

 30 to 40 feet, and consist of a series of stratified beds of well- 

 rounded flint-pebbles imbedded in white sand, and with two or 

 three subordinate beds of light-coloured clay." ^ These are the 

 true Westleton Beds, which are exposed in pits on Westleton Moor 

 or Common, and which extend across Westleton Heath to the clifi" 

 at Dunwich, where they rest on the Crag Series and are overlain by 

 Chalky Boulder-clay. 



In his later paper on the Westleton Beds, Prestwich took into the 

 group a greater thickness of strata at Westleton, his " General 

 Section " including 20 feet of " white sand passing down into 

 ochreous pebbly sands with a few large unworn blocks of flint and 

 some ironstone bands and concretions," which occurred below the 

 mass of the Westleton Beds, so clearly described in his preceding 

 statement.* Altogether he took in about 54 feet of strata, and 

 although he mentioned that no fossils were met with in this 



^ Eead before the British Associatioia, Section C (Geology), Glasgow, Sept., 1901. 



2 Geol. Mag., Dec. II, Vol. IX, p. 452 ; Dec. IV, Vol. Ill, p. 357. 



3 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1871, vol. xxvii, p. 461. 

 * Ibid., 1890, vol. xlvi, p. 96. 



