94 S. V. WOOD, JT7N., AND P. W. HARMER ON THE 



It is impossible to determine whether the clay with chalk debris (8?) 

 resting in patches in this valley on the shingle of the Pebbly Sands 

 (5) is the Upper Glacial clay of the high ground, or the bed occurring 

 in the Yare valley under the Middle Glacial {a in section V.) ; but 

 there are several occurrences of it in the bottom of the Ket valley 

 resting on the Pebbly Sands. These show, however, at least that the 

 Ket valley was excavated subsequently to the Lower Glacial, and 

 before or during the Upper Glacial deposits. 



Having passed in review all the river-valleys of Eastern Norfolk, we 

 now come to the Waveney, the principal river of Norfolk and Suffolk, 

 the valley of which has, since the description by Mr. Prestwich of the 

 Hoxne brick-earth deposit containing evidence of Palaeolithic man, 

 possessed a special interest, and in connexion with which deposit, and 

 the inferences drawn from it as to the excavation of the Waveney val- 

 ley since the accumulation of that brick-earth, much controversy has 

 taken place*. The late Mr. J. W. Flower maintained f , and, as it 

 seems to us, with much reason, that the width of this valley at the 

 source of its river, its confluence there with the valley of the Little 

 Ouse flowing in the opposite direction, and the absence of any very 

 high land near its source forbade the possibility of the river 

 Waveney having been the agent producing the excavation of the 

 valley through which it flows. Whatever be the case, however, as 

 to this, it seems to us clear that the Waveney valley, like those 

 which we have been describing, was produced by the denudation 

 which has so largely destroyed the Contorted Drift, and which 

 took place between the formation of that deposit and the Middle 

 Glacial. 



It may be worth observing that if the view expressed at the con- 

 clusion of this paper of the area beyond the limit of the Middle 

 Glacial in Norfolk and Suffolk having been during its accumulation 

 occupied by the branch of the land ice which flowed over Lincoln- 

 shire be well founded, it may serve to explain the difficulties 

 suggested by Mr. Mower, and in this way : viz. such a glacier must 

 have greatly denuded and lowered the area on which it rested, and 

 thus the great level of the Fenland must have been produced by it ; 

 now if we suppose the interglacial valley of the Waveney to have been 

 merely the eastern extremity of a far longer valley of which that 

 of the Little Ouse formed the next portion westward, and whose 

 head was yet further west, or north, it is not difficult to see that the 

 slope of the Little-Ouse portion might have been reversed by the de- 

 grading action of this ice, which was of a magnitude to be indepen- 

 dent of such small valleys, and derived its motion from the contour 

 of the country lying between it and its source in the mountain- 

 districts of the north of England. The abrupt termination of the 

 Middle Glacial and of the Contorted Drift a few miles west of the 

 confluent source of the Little Ouse and Waveney, seems to find an 



* Mr. Belt has lately (Quart.. Joum. Science, July, 1876) endeavoured to 

 show that the Hoxne brick- earth is not, as hitherto supposed, newer than the 

 Upper Glacial clay, but Preglacial. 



t Quart. Joum. Geol. Soc. vol. xxiii. p. 55. 



