Reports and Proceedings. ol5 



imbedded fallen trunks of trees still extending their rootlets into the 

 ancient soil. In the swampy rivers which sluggishly meandered 

 through this dim forest land, huge beavers built their dams. The 

 hippopotami wallowed in droves, and various species of elephants 

 fed on the young shoots of the trees. Deer by thousands, and of a 

 variety of species, inhabited the same localities. Meantime the 

 rivers deposited mud containing fresh-water shells, and the remains 

 of water beetles. The fir cones and hazel nuts dropped in countless 

 thousands into this same mud, and so have been preserved until 

 now. A dense bog was formed of the aquatic and other plants, aided 

 by the autumnal foliage of the forest. The falling trunks lay im- 

 bedded and obtained a geological immortality, and so was formed . 

 the Forest Bed of the Norfolk coast. Meantime immense changes 

 came on. The land sank, not by sudden submergence, but slowly, 

 and extending over a period immensely vast, if calculated in years. 

 A fresh fauna and flora were introduced. A rigorously cold climate 

 came on ; the Forest Bed became a part of the sea-l3ed, and great 

 icebergs floated over its site, and stranded amid its vegetable ruins. 

 Arctic fish and molluscs migrated thither in order to obtain a fresh 

 location. Dark fringes of sea- weed attached themselves to recum- 

 bent trunks of elm and oak, and the deep icy sea covered the sub- 

 marine forest from the light. Packs of icebergs and sheets of field- 

 ice, as well as great glaciers from neighbouring lands, brought down 

 immense quantities of mud, and thus the old Forest Bed was covered 

 up to a depth of a hundred feet. Such is a portion of the physical 

 history of this coast. Again, the dread rigour of a Greenland climate 

 is slowly retreating before an advancing and increasingly wai"m Grulf- 

 stream. The ocean bottom is being gradually uplifted, and on its 

 clayey beds are thrown down banks of sand. The sea-floor at 

 length emerges above the waters. England was once more joined 

 to the continent, and the Forest Bed lay a hundred feet below a 

 mass of clays and gravels. Various agencies scooped out the 

 present bottom of the German Ocean, possibly during a second or 

 partial submergence. Meantime a great river, emptying itself pro- 

 bably into a fresh water lake, the site of which is now occupied by 

 the sea, flowed near Mundesley. The old clay and gravel were worn 

 away by the river until the Forest Bed was again laid bare, and in this 

 excavated hollow was deposited a series of fresh water strata imtil it 

 had been filled up. Finally, a last general submergence of the land 

 coated all these older deposits with a bed of gravel, ten or twelve feet 

 in thickness, now to be seen running along the top of the Norfolk cliffs. 

 Such is the history self-related by these beds, and the reader wUl 

 willingly grant them of interest. The first bed visited on Tuesday 

 was a bed of marine shells, corresponding probably to the Upper 

 Crag bed found near Norwich. Most of the shells were in a 

 shattered and comminuted state, but they were none the less good 

 evidence of the conditions under which the bed had been formed. 

 Further on, the party proceeded to the black-looking strata of old 

 river mud, which at once proclaim their fresh- water origin. A few 

 minutes' digging with a trowel, or cleaving open the laminse of the 



