558 Reports c& Proceedings — British Association. 



sented by Barrow's High, Level (Pliocene) Gravel of the London 

 Basin, wlaich, seems to belong to a period prior, as he believes, to the 

 great denudation. 



This, then, would be the western embayment of the North Sea. 



A movement en bascule seems to have ensued, resulting in a general 

 but intermittent uplift on the English side and along the axis of 

 Artois, with a complementary slow depression of Northern Belgium 

 and Holland. Great denudation of the British Diestian, and probably 

 some Miocene, ensued, and the Coralline Crag, probably an offshore 

 shoal in 20 or 30 fathoms of maximum depth, was accumulated upon 

 an eroded surface of Lower Eocene ; but its gravelly base obtained 

 the coarse scourings of London Clay, 1 Miocene, and fossiliferous 

 concretions of a sandstone near to the Diestian in age. 



On the Belgian side depression seems to have been almost 

 continuous. 



The Coralline Crag was uplifted and subjected to severe sub- 

 aerial and marine erosion, and the Eed Crag overlapped it on the 

 English and Belgian sides. 



With the earliest Eed Crag, that of Walton-on-the-Naze, the record 

 becomes practically continuous. Steady uplift was taking place in 

 the south, throwing the coast-line farther and farther north. Harmer 

 recognizes three stages, but many more could be distinguished by 

 the progressive changes in the fauna — the elimination of Southern 

 types and the incoming of Northern. 



The Norwich Crag comes in north of a ridge of Coralline Crag at 

 Aldeburgh, and appears to represent a very slightly more modern 

 phase than the Red Cragflanking the ridge on the south. 



Chillesford Sand and Clay surmount the Red and Norwich Crag 

 from Essex upward. 



Harmer regards them as the deposits of a winding estuary of 

 the Rhine. 



A renewal of the " Crag " type of deposition, the Weybourn 

 Crag, with Tellina halthica, was succeeded by a definite estuarine 

 series, the Cromer Forest Bed. It begins with the Freshwater Bed, 

 in which a flora comparable to that of Norfolk to-day is found. This 

 is followed by a marine deposit with Arctic shells, and above that 

 a second freshwater bed with an Arctic flora. 



This series may rest directly on the Chalk, an effect of the con- 

 tinued upward tendency on the English side of the sea. 



In Holland the Avhole Pliocene series is probably present, and the 

 great thickness of comparatively shallow-water deposits prevailing 

 down to 1,100 feet at Utrecht bespeaks a continual downward 

 tendency of the Low Countries. 



The evidences of Pliocene conditions further north are extremely 

 scanty, in fact, only near Hartlepool, where Trechmann has found 

 a pre-Glacial plant-bed, is there any relic of Pliocene deposits in 

 their native position. 



At Sheringham Mr. Stather has found a block, doubtless from the 



