Prof. T. G. Bouncy— The Chalk Bluffed Truniucjham. 405 



extension on the Mundesley side of the uioi'e eastern mass being only 

 visible at one place, and thus like a separate boulder. We found no 

 evidence (but that might have been due to unfavourable circumstances) 

 in favour of the two forming part of a single mass, traversed by 

 a fault, and thought them, as on previous occasions, more probably 

 both separate and erratics. 



In conclusion, Mr, Brydone's reference to our former paper 

 (p. 127) as " dealing somewhat sketchily with the purely strati- 

 graphical aspect of the Trimingham Chalk on apparently very 

 incomplete data," calls for a few comments, because, like 

 Mr. B. B. Woodward's criticism, with which we briefly dealt 

 in the November number for last year, it involves a question in 

 the method of writing papers which is of souie importance. 

 Notwithstanding Mr. Brydone's censure, I venture to remark that 

 the study of fossil pol3'Zoa may not be the best schooling for 

 dealing with questions of physical and stratigraphical geology, and 

 that at any rate we did not need to be informed, after committing 

 ourselves to print, that the magnetic and the true north are some 

 twenty degrees apart. We sought to disprove a particular 

 hypothesis, i.e. that the chalk at Trimingham bluff showed, like 

 a monument, how an ice-sheet could bend and pucker up the rock 

 over which it advanced. After visiting the critical section, at 

 intervals during twelve years, we found that the inroads of the sea 

 had at last provided evidence which, in our opinion, was fatal to 

 Mr. Eeid's hypothesis and suggested that a group of erratics existed 

 here as elsewhere on the coast. lu stating this evidence, for that 

 particular purpose, we considered (and remain of the same opinion) 

 discussions both of minute palyeontological details (interesting in 

 their way) and of previous readings of the coast sections to be 

 equally irrelevant. The new evidence was, in our opinion, 

 unfavourable to the sea-stack hypothesis, so nothing was to be 

 gained, except a waste of time and space, by discussing that. 

 Certainly it was one against which we entertained no prejudice, 

 for, could it have been established, it would have been, in our 

 opinion, fatal to the ice-sheet Frankenstein. If a stack of by no 

 means strong chalk could withstand the monster's ramming and 

 rooting, what becomes of the fjords, lake-basins, and similar results 

 of the " minor fury of ice-foam." That spectre, at any rate, would 

 have been exorcised, melting into mists as it sought refuge in the 

 place of its nativity. 



We therefore maintain that as our evidence was new, and the 

 scope of our paper limited, any precis of the literature of the subject 

 was both needless and otiose. I will even venture to express 

 a belief that this display of literary research threatens to be exalted 

 into a geological fetish. Disinterring past errors, unless it be 

 necessary to confute them, is a thankless process, and the hunting 

 for mare's nests through dust-covered tomes consumes time that 

 could be much better employed in the study of sections ; for the 

 contents of these nests but rarely provide a nutritious mental diet. 

 When consciously indebted to others for a fact or an argument, we 



