516 Beports and Proceedings. 



strata, exposes their contents. Here are the remams of fishes, 

 perch, and pike, wings of fresh-water beetles, seeds, leaves and stems 

 of plants ; together with the same fresh- water shells now found in 

 our rivers. 



Mr. Gunn read a paper by Mr. Prestwich, on the Mundesley river 

 bed, in which was shown the purely fresh- water character of the de- 

 posits, and how they had been formed. Many of the members 

 walked to Trimmingham, in order to study still further the coast- 

 line, and more particularly to visit the peculiar outliers of Chalk 

 which there rise up amid the clay-beds by which they are sur- 

 rounded. Kepeated stoppages were made to notice the varied geo- 

 logical features of the coast. In one place the overlying sands 

 were seen contorted into the most fantastic shapes, this having 

 been effected when those very sands formed part of banks on 

 which icebergs stranded, and pushed the sand out of its original 

 layers into the contorted position it now presents. At another 

 part, fragments of marine shells, such as Tellina solidula, might be 

 seen plentifully scattered through the tenacious clay, iudicatuig 

 its marine origin. Here some boulder of granite or trap would 

 be disinterred, and its well worn and scratched surface told of the 

 ice action which had grated it against other hard substances and 

 produced these striee — ^there, a land - slip, which had brought 

 down to the foot of the cliffs a portion of the upper beds, enabling 

 the party to study them better. At length the Trimmingham Chalk 

 outliers were reached. These immense masses were formerly sup- 

 posed to have been portions brought down by still greater ice- 

 bergs, and dropped on their present site. A careful examination, 

 however, points out their true nature. The trained eye sees in 

 the contorted flint bands and strata a similar upheaval to that 

 seen at Whitlingham, and suggests that these outliers have been 

 upheaved higher than the rest of the Chalk, and so preserved 

 whilst other beds were wasted away by abrading agencies. In 

 fact, these bluffs of Chalk are the only remains of beds of which 

 they once formed part. — beds to be seen in Holland. There can 

 be little doubt that the area now occupied by the ocean was formerly 

 filled by these upper Chalk beds. It is from the wreck and waste 

 which subsequently ensued that we have the vast beds of flint 

 gravels so common in this county. The very quantity of these 

 disengaged flints indicates how extensive the wear and tear has 

 been. Another fact is very remarkable. The gravel flints often 

 contain fossil sponges, not to be found in the flint bands and nodules 

 still lying in the Chalk. Indeed, these fossils prove them to have 

 been mainly characteristic of an upper bed. Now, singularly 

 enough, the flint nodules lying in situ in the Trimmingham Chalk 

 contain fossil sponges in immense quantities, identical with those 

 found near Norwich in the liberated flints. This fact proves that 

 the Trunmingham Chalk outliers are of the very highest strata of 

 that formation, and that our local flint gravels are the remains of 

 the wear and tear to which it has been subjected in the geological 

 ages which have elapsed since its deposition. 



