26 William Whitaker—The Red Chath of Norfolk. 
mistakes that geologists had been led into thereby (such as taking 
reddish Carboniferous Sandstone for Permian, solely on account 
of its colour), some such mistake might have been made as to 
our particular red friend; and that whilst we had been thinking 
that we were dealing with a bed we might really have been 
misled by what might be merely a colour-line. Unfortunately 
there are in Norfolk no other sections showing the junction of 
the White and Red Chalk than those of the Hunstanton cliff 
and of a pit near by the railway-station, and therefore no great 
way from the cliff. These sections certainly do not aid my notion, 
for in them the sponge-bed invariably overlies the Red Chalk, 
and it is unlikely that a colour-stain should be confined so strictly 
to one geological horizon for a long distance. Prof. Judd moreover 
has noted the same succession in Lincolnshire, as aforesaid, so 
that my colour-line idea must be put aside. 
As to the cliff-section there is probably little to be added to the 
detailed descriptions that have been published, except that from 
the nature of such a section there is a constant chance of some- 
thing fresh being shown. In regard to the softer and more sandy 
base of the red rock (which contains grains of glauconite not 
decomposed) passing down into the Carstone in places, I think 
little is proved by it, for such a passage may be apparent rather 
than real, through having been caused partly perhaps by the 
working up of a little of the lower bed during the deposit of 
the upper, but partly also to the slight carrying down of particles 
of the upper into the lower through the infiltration of water down- 
wards after the deposition and consolidation of the Chalk, an 
action which there is nothing to hinder, and which would result 
in carrying away part of the calcareous matter in solution. With 
reference to planes of jointing being stopped at the top of the 
red rock, as noticed by Mr. Seeley, when I saw the section in 
1880, the joints stopped rather at the top of the Inoceramus-bed, 
though some went through to its base; so that little is proved 
by them, for they have been seen to stop at three different levels. 
In the course of my survey work in West Norfolk, as yet very 
incomplete, I have traced the Chalk Marl northwards from within a 
few miles of Lynn. It has the clayey character so usual to this 
bottom division of the Chalk in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, etc., 
giving rise to a belt of country covered with oaks and elms, and not 
having the usual look of an ordinary Chalk tract; but it is of far 
less thickness than in Cambridgeshire, perhaps eastward of Lynn 
some 20 feet only ; whilst going north it gets thinner still, until at 
last it disappears, the last I have seen of it being at Sandringham. 
In this part of Norfolk this clayey Chalk Marl is characterized by 
having some layers of a very pale pinkish colour, an occurrence that 
I do not remember having noticed to the south. 
In the tract to which ] have alluded Gault clay also occurs; but to 
a less extent than the Chalk Marl, being only a few feet thick, and 
last seen in the neighbourhood of Castle Rising. 
The argument, therefore, that the Red Chalk represents the Gault 
