﻿THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE II. VOL. IV. 



No. IX.— SEPTEMBER, 1877. 



I. —The Kessingland Fkeshwater Bed and Weyboukne Sand. 

 By S. V. Wood, Jun., F.G.S., and F. W. Harmer, F.G.S. 



TWO papers in the July Number of this Magazine, one by Mr. J, 

 H. Blake, and the other by Mr. C. Eeid, impugn certain repre- 

 sentations given by us of beds on the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, and 

 demand from us some remark. 



As the paper of Mr. Blake, "On the Kessingland Cliff Section," 

 does not introduce any new fact, either as to the section itself, or in 

 contradiction or qualification of the evidence which was offered in 

 our joint paper in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 

 for February, 1877, or in the separate paper })y one of us in the 

 same Journal, we have only to say that we have never advanced, 

 nor do we entertain, any decided opinion that the freshwater beds 

 of the section ai-e of interglacial age ; and that we only suggested 

 the possibility of such a thing as a matter for consideration in con- 

 nexion with other interglacial features described by us. 



So far as we can see, Mr. Blake's objections amount to this, that 

 freshwater beds with roots, overlain by the Lower G-lacial beds, 

 occur in Gorton cliff, and in places on the Gromer coast ; and that, 

 therefore, they are necessarilj'^ of the same age as those of Kessing- 

 land, which are not so overlain. On this point we beg to refer your 

 readers to the observations made by us in the " Introduction to the 

 Supplement to the Grag Mollusca " (p. xv), as to the improbability 

 of any denudation having so evenly removed the Lower Glacial 

 beds (which must have once covered this district, since they occur in 

 considerable thickness in the neighbourhood) without leaving a trace 

 of them, and yet have spared the root-indented surface of the un- 

 stratified bed of clay, throughout the whole length of the section, 

 which extends for more than a mile. 



The interglacial denudation, with which we suggested in our 

 joint paper the bed in question migJit be connected, rests, however, 

 on far clearer evidence ; and the very case which Mr. Blake would 

 assume in explanation of the preglacial age of these freshwater 

 deposits, viz. the removal of the Lower Glacial beds before the 

 deposition of the Middle Glacial, involves the admission of such 

 denudation. 



Mr. Blake says that the section given in the separate paper by one 

 of us, as well as the description, is inaccurate ; but he does not 

 specify in what respect ; nor does he say anything about the series 

 of beds Avhich Mr. Gunn shows in his section as intervening between 



decade II. VOL. IT. — NO. IX. 25 



