428 Reports and Proceedings. 



Hunstanton Cliff: or St. Edmund's Hill, although of moderate ele- 

 vation and extent, forms, from the comparative flatness of the adjacent 

 country, a somewhat conspicuous object, and from the three distinctly 

 marked coloured strata (white, red, and brown) of which it is composed, 

 has, when viewed from the north-eastern end, a very picturesque 

 appearance. At th© highest part of the cliff about GO or 70 feet 

 above the shore, and near the ruins of the ancient chapel, stands the 

 lighthouse, the houses of the old village being rather more inland. 

 This cliff, which forms the north-western point of Norfolk, and, 

 bordering the Wash, consists of Cretaceous strata which re-appear 

 on the opposite coast of Lincolnshire, with which they were, 

 doubtless, once continuous, although now widely separated by the 

 modern estuary, from the most conspicuous stratum — the White 

 Chalk — with an average breadth of about six miles, can be traced 

 from Flamborough Head, trending for some miles westward, forming 

 hills with a northerly escarpment, which range of hills, bearing 

 suddenly round in a south-easterly direction, form the Wolds of 

 Yorkshire. South of the Humber the Chalk rises again into another 

 hilly range — the Lincolnshire Wolds — and terminates at Burgh, 

 south of which it is lost beneath the alluvial land of the easternmost 

 part of the county. Eeappearing at Hunstanton, the Chalk forms a 

 ridge of hills, running nearly south towards Castle Acre and 

 Swaffham, near to which it becomes again partly obscured by 

 superficial deposits. 



The section of the cliif, aboxit a mile in length, exposed along 

 the shore, which was the chief object of the visit of the Associa- 

 tion, has been long one of interest to geologists, from the particular 

 development of the stratum termed the " Eed Chalk" — a bed 

 which has been traced in a corresponding position in some parts 

 of Lincolnshire, as near Louth and Tealby, but only again exposed 

 in a sea-cliff section near Speeton, on the Yorkshire coast, where, 

 however, it attains a thickness of 30 feet, while at Hunstanton it is 

 only 4 feet. From the latter place the outcrop of this bed can be 

 traced to Sandringham, eight miles southwards. 



Many notices have been published of this section, from that 

 of Mr. E. C. Taylor, in 1823, or even previously by Conybeare 

 and Phillips, to the paper by the Eev. T. Wiltshire in 1869, 

 and particularly by Dr. Fitton, in the Geological Transactions 

 for 1836, who cites the previous writers, and the result of his 

 own observations 10 years before. The Eed Chalk has always 

 been a special object of investigation, with a view of deter- 

 mining its true position in the geological scale, or of which of 

 the Cretaceous beds in the Southern Counties it is the equivalent, for 

 it has been considered to represent the Gault, the Upper G-reensand, 

 or even both these formations, and was believed by Mr. Samuel 

 Woodward (Geology of Norfolk, 1833, p. 30) to be identical with 

 the " Chalk with quartz grains " noticed by De la Beche as occurring 

 near Lyme Eegis. 



The strata of the cliff consist in descending order of White Chalk, 

 Eed Chalk, brown and dark coloured ferruginous sands and coarse 



