Eeports and Proceedings. 519 



In conclusion, the author of this short sketch hopes that it may be 

 the means of attracting attention to the subject, and thereby of 

 causing a hitherto almost unexplored field of microscopic enquiry to 

 be more cultivated ; and leaves it to his readers to form a correct 

 estimate of the justness of the sneering assertion that " mountains 

 should not be looked at through microscopes." 



Norwich Geological Society. — At the monthly meeting of this 

 Society, held at the Museum, on the 3rd of September, the President, 

 the Eev. J. Gunn, in the chair, Mr. Bayfield called the attention of 

 the members to a paragraph, announcing the finding of a buried 

 forest when digging the foundations for a dock at Hull, This 

 would seem to be a continuation of the Norfolk Forest-bed. The Pre- 

 sident then read the following paper " On Eecent Formations in the 

 Valleys of Norfolk." The mode in which the valleys in Norfolk 

 have been formed has been satisfactorily ascertained, and the system 

 may be said to have been worked out. In the valley of the Wen- 

 sum, for instance, we perceive how the Post-glacial and Glacial beds, 

 the Crag and the Chalk, answer to each other on either side, the in- 

 termediate portions having been scooped out by the agency of water, 

 aided by ice and snow, in a colder time than the present. The object 

 of my paper is to point out what has almost escaped observation, 

 namely^ the contrary process, the filling up of the lower part of the 

 valleys after they have been formed. That they have been scooped 

 out to a much greater depth than the present level of the marshes, 

 and turbaries within them, can easily be proved by sinking or boring. 

 If this were done in the Thorpe marshes, for instance, or anywhere 

 between Norwich and Yarmouth, we should have to penetrate a con- 

 siderable depth before we reached the Chalk or the older formations. 

 At Yarmouth, at Sir B. Lacon's brewery, the bore was 170 feet deep 

 before the London Clay was reached. A change, or changes of level ' 

 must therefore be assumed, in order to account for the erosion having 

 been carried down so far beneath the present level of the water, and, 

 afterwards, the deposit of mud and soil, and the growth of peat 20 

 feet thick, up to the present water level. 



In the valley of the Ant I have observed, wherever a section has 

 been presented by the cutting of dykes and ditches, a substratum of 

 light-coloured, tenacious sandy clay, in which the roots of trees are 

 abundant. It appears to have been the site of an extensive forest, 

 which bordered the ancient river. A fine section of this has 

 been lately shown at Stalham, on the making a boat-dyke from 

 the river to Mr. Cooke's malt-house. The alder and birch appeared 

 to be the prevailing trees. The section showed how this bed was 

 cut off and truncated on the river side by the turbary, without its 

 sinking under it ; and on the land side how it apparently passed 

 under the warp and a bed of sand. No trace of shells of any descrip- 

 tion have been found in this clayey bed ; and it has long been a 



