﻿156 Thos. Belt — The Glacial Period in Norfolk. 



Limestone and the New Eed Sandstone, and a passage from one into 

 the other, there are at least three subdivisions wanting that should 

 come between these formations. 



I am quite willing to admit that there is a much greater degree of 

 conformity between the Permian and the New Eed Sandstone than 

 between the Carboniferous and the Permian, and that the great 

 division between the Primary and the Secondary formations should 

 be at the bottom and not at the top of the Permian. The links that 

 bound the Permian to the Carboniferous are now nearly all broken. 

 The Lower Eed Sandstone of Sedgwick, or Eothliegende of 

 Murchison, lying below the Magnesian Limestone, with its coal- 

 plants and even coal-beds, is now proved to be either Coal-measures 

 or Millstone-grit, and the Permians of Staffordshire and Warwick- 

 shire are now said to be Upper Coal-measures of a red colour. 



The relation between the Permian and the New Eed Sandstone is 

 an intei'esting question, but the truth can only be arrived at by a 

 statement of facts. I have nowhere myself seen a passage upwards 

 from the Permian into the New Eed Sandstone, but I will not say 

 such a thing does not occur. 



III. — On the Fikst Stages op the Glacial Pekiod in Norfolk 



AND Suffolk. 



By Thomas Belt, F. G. S. 



THE publication in the last Quarterly Journal of the G-eological 

 Society of the most instructive paper by Messrs. S. V. Wood, 

 jun., and F. W. Harmer, on the Later Tertiary Geology of East 

 Anglia, and one by the latter author on the Kessingland Ciiff-section, 

 induces me to offer the following remarks, with the hope that my 

 views may be considered by geologists who have made this question 

 their study. 



Messrs. Wood and Harmer show very clearly that over most of 

 Norfolk and Suffolk, laminated brick-earths were originally spread 

 out, and afterwards more or less denuded, and in some parts greatly 

 contorted and disturbed. At their base lie pebbly sands, which are 

 partly the " Westleton beds " of Mr. Prestwich, and above them lie 

 the "Middle Glacial sands and gravels" of Mr. S. V. Wood, jun. 



In nearly all the sections given by the authors in the above-named 

 memoirs, and in most of those that I have myself examined, the 

 brick-earths and pebbly sands rest directly on the Chalk or on the 

 Newer Tertiary beds. In the few exceptions, as in the Cromer Cliff- 

 section, and near Thetford, where these brick-earths are underlain 

 wholly or in part by till, there is much disturbance of the strata, and 

 the beds are greatly contorted and folded, as has been very fully 

 described by Sir Charles Lyell. 



I have in various papers urged that the ice that flowed down the 

 bed of the German Ocean reached to and invaded the coast of 

 Norfolk ; and it may very well have been reinforced by ice that 

 had rounded the southern end of the Pennine Chain from the 



