338 PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



I had always been told that large bones were occasionally found 

 in these clays ; but it was not until this last winter that auy were 

 brought to my notice, when I was informed that the bones of some 

 large animal had been discovered ; and on visiting the pit in com- 

 pany with Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, I was shown the vertebral column of 

 a great whale at a depth of 8 feet from the surface, and lying at 

 right angles to the face of the section. These vertebrae were exactly 

 in the position in which they might have been left at the death 

 of the animal — each vertebra lying a few inches apart from its 

 neighbours, owing to the removal of the cartilaginous matter be- 

 tween them. About seven vertebrae have been taken out ; and it 

 is to be hoped that a further portion of the skeleton may yet be dis- 

 covered *. Fig. 19 is a sketch of this pit. 



As this clay forms an important link in the correlation of the 

 Suffolk with the Norfolk Crags, I will, before touching upon the 

 latter, proceed to trace it from south to north through the Eed-Crag 

 area. 



Commencing at the furthest point south, the bed of clay (see 

 fig. 12, bed 3) overlying the sands at Walton-on-the-Naze should 

 probably be referred to this zone. In mineral character it 

 closely resembles the Chillesford clay ; and it contains in places, as 

 it does again further north, fragments and j)ieces of wood, but I 

 could here find no traces of shells. In the Ipswich and Woodbridge 

 districts this clay is not seen, and the gravels of the Boulder-clay 

 series repose immediately upon unproductive Chillesford sands or on 

 the Crag. The clay is met with on the hiUs in the neighbourhood 

 of Felixstow, and again near HoUesley ; but it is at Chillesford 

 that it is best developed and becomes fossiliferous. It may be 

 traced capping the hills between Sudbourne and Iken. Some 

 time since, there was a good section in a pit half a mile north 

 of Black Walks, in the direction of Iken. A laminated clay, 8 or 

 10 feet thick and fuU of the casts of the following shells, there 

 overlies a bed of light-coloured sands, under which, at a depth of 

 a few feet, the Red Crag was reached in a trench I had dug : — 



Cardium groenlandicum. Nucula tenuis. 



Leda myalls. Tellina lata. 



And in the same clay at the pit at Low Farm we found : — 



Cardium groenlandicum. Seobicularia piperata. 



Leda myalis. Turritella communis. 



Nucula Cobboldiffi. 



There was formerly a pit on Webber's Whin Farm, a mile and a 

 half W.S.W. from Aldborough Ferry, where the fossiliferous Chilles- 

 ford sands occurred, and with them a group of shells to which 

 elsewhere special attention has been directed by Mr. Fisher f, by 

 whom this bed has been termed the Mya-hed, from the abundance 



* Dr. Crisp has since ascertained it to be an entire whale 31 feet long. (Brit. 

 Assoc. Eep. 1868, Trans. Sect. p. 61.) 



t " On the Relation of the Norwich Crag to the Chillesford Clay or Loam " 

 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxii. p. 19). 



