S. V. Wood, Jun. — Sequence of the Glacial Beds. Q6 



identity between these beds and another described from the same 

 neiglibourhood by Mr. Jamieson in 18G0,' under the name of Crag, 

 is answered. The sheila from this last mentioned deposit were 

 submitted by Mr. Jamieson to my father at the time, and as it had 

 not then been decided that Tellina BaltMca {solidida), which was 

 among them, was not a Crag shell, and as the rest of the shells 

 were Crag forms, and especially as they comprised Nassa relicosa 

 var-rugosa, it was reasonable that both Mr. Jamieson and my father 

 should, as they did assign them to that formation.'-' The presence 

 of this Tellina is regarded by my father now and by myself as 

 conclusive proof of the Glacial age of this bed ; and there seems 

 every probability, from the combined circumstances of its being a 

 stratified, sandy gravel, in which flints are common ; of its under- 

 lying Boulder-clay; and of its containing, not merely Pectunculus 

 glycimeris in abundance, but also, with the exception of this Tellina, 

 exclusively Crag forms, that this deposit is the East Anglian Middle 

 Glacial, 



Whether the beds so described in 1858, and embraced by Mr. 

 Harkness in his identification, can now be made out to be identical 

 with the bed of 1860, it is for Mr. Jamieson, or others who are 

 able to study them on the spot, to determine ; for Mr. Jamieson, 

 in describing these supposed Crag sands, confines them to two 

 parishes only out of the extensive tract, thirty-five miles in length, 

 described in 1858, and distinctly negatives any identity between 

 them and the principal part of the beds of the Aberdeenshire coast. 

 I think, therefore, that we are bound to suspend our judgment on 

 the age of these 1858 beds until this point is cleared up. 



The magnitude of the Middle Glacial formation may be best 

 illustrated by saying that the formation extends (but mostly covered 

 by the clay, e") over nearly all of the three large counties of 

 Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, besides its ramifications into the more 

 central counties ; and there is some reason, I think, to believe, as I 

 pointed out some years ago, that it spreads, under the name of Sables 

 de Campine of A. Dumont, over a large portion of Belgium and the 

 parts of Europe contiguous thereto. A good idea may be formed of 

 its mass and extent by the line of railway from Colchester to beyond 

 Woodbridge, throughout which distance the cuttings almost ex- 

 clusively traverse it. Those who hunt for fossils in the Bed Crag 

 will find that formation, wherever the denudation has not descended 

 too low, overlain by it. 



I have expressed, in papers read before the Geological Society, 

 an impression that I entertain, derived both from physical and 

 paleeontological evidence, that the Glacial beds of the North of 

 England are all newer than the Middle Glacial of East Anglia , and 

 it seems to me that, with the exception of the Aberdeenshire beds, 

 already referred to, the Scotch beds, Boulder-earth, Boulder-clay, 

 and stratified beds, called, though of different ages, all Glacial, from 



^ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xvi., p. 371. 



"^ They also yield Nucula Cobboldke and Valuta Lamberti. Quart. Journal Geol. 

 Soc, vol. xxi. p. 162. 



VOL. VII. — NO. LXVIU. 5 



