﻿1851.] 



AUSTEN ON THE PLEISTOCENE PERIOD. 



133 



Crag, with those which the English Channel area has here presented, 

 we see a like order of physical conditions in both. The beds of ter- 

 restrial origin at Runton and Mundesley, on the north-east coast of 



Fig. 6. — Profile of Cromer Cliff (February 1824, 

 R. C. Taylor, Esq.). 



Green Hill, 270 feet. Foulness Light. 



1. Chalk; exposed at low-water. with fragments of similar shells to those 



2. Laminated blue clay, with Crag shells ; sup- in 3. 



porting 6. Detached masses of chalk. 



3. Stumps and branches of trees. Peat, bones 7. Horizontal beds of sand, on an uneven sur- 



of deer, elephant, &c. face of clay. 



4. Blue clay, with fragments of shells. 8. Sands and gravels. 



5. Brown clay, much disturbed and contorted; 



Norfolk, show the conversion of an area previously covered by the 

 waters of the early pleistocene sea into that of dry land, with sub- 

 ordinate alluvial and freshwater deposits, the whole covered by beds 

 of marine origin (a second stage in the pleistocene period), and passing 

 beneath the present level of the North Sea*. Mr. Trimmer states 

 that the mammalian remains (elephant, deer, &c.) of this part of the 

 coast are derived from the sub-aerial surface, and that local collectors 

 give like testimony f. This view I consider to be the correct one, and 

 that all the remains of animals found in the overlying till, have been 

 derived in every instance from portions of the expanse of that former 

 terrestrial surface. If we couple these considerations with what has 

 been before stated respecting the broad alluvia of our former rivers, 

 and their relation to the thick sub-aerial accumulations, and also bear 

 in mind that similar conditions, and in like order, are presented on the 

 opposite sides of the two areas of sea which now insulate this country ; 

 we may safely assume, as an ascertained point in the physical geo- 

 graphy of a part of the pleistocene period, that at a time subsequent 

 to the sea-level indicated by the Norwich Crag and its equivalents 

 (and at that of greater sub-aerial elevation), this island formed part 

 continuously with the dry land of the Continent of Europe, of which 

 tract it then formed the western portion. It was during the conti- 

 nuance of these conditions, and which it is clear must have been of 

 great duration, that the great mammalian fauna, buried in caverns, 

 ancient lakes, and alluvia, attained its numerical maximum. 



When the whole of the German Ocean was thus raised into dry 

 land, the course of the Rhine must have been continued northwards 



* Taylor was the first to point out this former terrestrial surface. 



f On the Geology of Norfolk, Journ. Agricult. Soc. vol. vii. part 2. p. 459. 



