﻿J. H. Blake — Age of the Kessingland Root-bed. 299 



siderable interest, in reference to the great denudation which, as Mr. 

 Wood and I (Mr. Harmer) maintain, followed the Lower Glacial 

 formation when the valley-system of East Anglia was, we believe, 

 mainly excavated." 



It is quite unnecessary — as will presently appear — to follow 

 Messrs. Wood and Harmer, any further in their theoretical views, 

 as to this Rootlet-bed being a deposit formed posteriorly to the Con- 

 torted Drift or Lower Botilder-clay, and during the great denudation 

 which they maintain took place previously to the deposition of the 

 Middle Glacial Sands, marking a long interval of time, and which, 

 they state, must have been accompanied by a climate as temperate 

 as that of the preglacial Forest-bed of the North Norfolk coast, if 

 their suggestion of the interglacial age of the Kessingland-bed should 

 prove to have good foundation, etc., etc. ; inasmuch, as the Eootlet- 

 bed, containing mammalian i-emains, can be proved by superposition, 

 irrespective of all other considerations, to underlie the Contorted 

 Drift or Lower Boulder-clay and other Lower Glacial beds ; there- 

 fore, is clearly not of the age suggested by the authors of these 

 papers. 



Messrs. Wood and Harmer mention this Eootlet-bed as " the well- 

 known Kessingland deposit," also as "the Mammalian-bed of Kessing- 

 land," etc., and treat it, in a great measure, as a deposit peculiar to the 

 Kessingland Cliff-section; but I would draw attention to the fact, 

 that the continuation of this very same deposit is to be seen at the 

 base of the adjoining cliffs of Hopton and Gorton, containing rootlets 

 of the same kind and in precisely the same crumpled condition as 

 those to be seen at Kessingland and Pakefield ; and the deposit 

 of clay itself — in which the rootlets occur in a vertical position as 

 they grew — is in every respect precisely similar to that at Kessing- 

 land, and likewise contains Mammalian remains. I have also observed 

 this same deposit, with rootlets, in the Cliff-section at Hasborough,^ 

 and also in the Cliff-section at Eunton, to the west of Cromer ; and 

 have not the slightest doubt as to the identity of this remarkable 

 bed — specially characterized by small vertical crumpled rootlets in 

 situ, all apparently of the same species — which is exposed at intervals 

 at the base of the Norfolk and Suffolk Cliffs, from Kessingland to 

 Eunton, a distance of nearly fifty miles ; thus, marking an horizon 

 of considerable importance with respect to the correlation of the 

 beds in Norfolk and Suffolk : and this horizon, I may briefly ex- 

 plain — as all details will be given in future Survey memoirs and 

 cliff-sections— occurs at the upper part, or thereabouts, of what is 

 generally known as the Cromer preglacial Forest-bed series, and 

 beneath the Lower Glacial series of Messrs. Wood and Harmer. 



Although, according to Mr. Harmer, there is nothing in the 

 Kessingland Cliff- section to show whether this deposit, with 

 rootlets, preceded the Lower Glacial beds, that is not the case in 

 the other cliff-sections mentioned by me, where a continuation of 

 this identical deposit with rootlets occurs ; at Hopton and Corton 

 it is overlaid by the Contorted Drift or Lower Boulder-clay, with a 

 1 Spelt Happisburgh on Ordnance Map ; but usually called Hasborougli. 



