56 Clement Reid—Glacial Deposits of Cromer. 
before or since has, I think, equalled this for the clearness and accu- 
racy with which the facts are noted. The various editions of Lyell’s 
works all contain essentially the same account of the Cromer Till 
and Contorted Drift. In 1845 Joshua Trimmer published a paper in the 
Geological Society’s Journal, and in 1851 he gave a further account 
of the beds, suggesting that the contortions had been formed by the 
melting of included masses of ice. In 1864 Mr. Gunn, in his “Sketch 
of the Geology of Norfolk,” gave a description of the beds near 
Cromer. The Rev. O. Fisher, in 1868, published a paper in the 
Guotoctcat Macazrine on the “ Denudations of Norfolk.’ In the 
same year and Magazine Messrs. 8. V. Wood, Jun., and F. W. 
Harmer, published an abstract of a paper, in which the Weybourn 
Sand is placed above the Pre-glacial freshwater beds, and made to 
pass by alternation into the Cromer Till. The succession given is— 
Sands and Gravels (Middle Glacial). 
Contorted Drift. 
Sands on an eroded surface of Cromer Till passing, by interbedding, 
into Weybourn Sands. 
Forest Bed. 
Messrs. Wood and Harmer in 1872 gave a fuller account of these 
beds in the Supplement to the Crag Mollusca.! In 1877 they brought 
forward the theory that extensive valley erosion had taken place 
after the formation of the Contorted Drift, and previous to the 
deposit of the Chalky Boulder-clay.?, In the same year Mr. Belt 
published a paper, in which he apparently considers the “Contorted 
Drift” to be older than the first Boulder-clay, and to be a later stage 
of the Pre-glacial laminated loams.? The Rev. O. Fisher again 
suggests that the Boulder-clay passes under the “ Forest Bed” of 
Happisburgh* [it is, however, merely a Pre-glacial stony soil, at first 
sight much like the bed below described as the “First Till”]. I 
have shown that, as Lyell originally pointed out, the Weybourn 
Crag comes below, and not above, the Pre-glacial freshwater beds, 
and that the Till is quite unconnected with these deposits.’ 
Pre-glacial Beds.—The Pre-glacial bads are too complicated to be 
described in a few lines: it will here be sufficient to state that the 
close of the Pliocene Period is marked by a lacustrine bed in which 
arctic plants, such as Salix polaris and Betula nana, occur for the 
first time. 
Till.—For the examination of the Drifts the cliffs near Cromer are 
too much contorted and obscured by constant land-slips to be of much 
assistance ; even inversions of the beds are not uncommon, and without 
great care they will convey an erroneous impression of the order of 
the deposits. It is therefore better to commence at Happisburgh, 
and work towards Cromer; for at Happisburgh the disturbances are 
not of such a nature or extent as to hide the relation of the beds. 
The Pre-glacial beds are succeeded by a deposit of perfectly 
unstratified till, which rests on a planed and tolerably horizontal 
* Paleeontographical Society, vol. xxv. (issued for 1871.) 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxiui. p. 74. 
2 Grou. Mac. Dee. II, Vol. IV. p. 156. 
4 Ibid. p. 479. >. Ibid. p. 300. 
Lower Glacial 
