472 Reports and Proceedings — 



above the sea-level ; this elevation decreases till we come to this 

 place, where, if any j^art of the so-called Norwich Crag or the Fluvio- 

 marine be of that age, such estuary beds must have been then much 

 in the same position as they are now, or at the sea-level. On evi- 

 dence such as this, the North-Sea area, after the period of the early 

 Kainozoic fauna or true Crag, is seen to be passing again to the con- 

 dition of terrestrial surface. 



This old depression of the North- Sea area, as had the other Tertiary 

 basins, again became part of the general European land-surface — a 

 northern extension of the Khine valley ; and again the geologist 

 meets with but little guidance as to the details of the chronology of 

 what must have been a period of vast duration. A long list of land 

 animals can be presented which have left their remains here ; that 

 some of these ranged over Central and Southern Europe, and 

 included this very district in the area of their life-period is 

 undoubted; but as to how many of these co-existed, or to what 

 extent they indicate a successive occupation, is still an undecided 

 question. 



The " Forest-bed " of Cromer gives a glimpse of what was the 

 vegetation of this period ; but here, again, it is more than probable 

 that it must be taken only as the facias of the flora of the last stage 

 of terrestrial conditions antecedent to the next great physical change, 

 rather than that of the whole period. 



The whole mammalian fauna, from the Norfolk Mastodon to the 

 Mammoth [Elephas primigenius), seems to offer itself as an assem- 

 blage of the members of nomad tribes, which have yet to be 

 reduced to order of time. The general condition of Northern Europe 

 was terrestial for the whole of the Tertiary or Kainozoic period; 

 during that time its conditions as to climate passed from warm to tem- 

 perate and to arctic. To its close belongs the evidence everywhere re- 

 curring, and at every level, of its subaerial glaciation and greater 

 elevation. 



Just as the Crag and Falun beds come in here, on our East- 

 Anglian district, and on the Continent, as breaks in the lapse of 

 Tertiary terrestrial conditions, so the accumulations of the great 

 northern submergence come in as a second intercalation, only that 

 the physical change in this case was greater and of a different order. 

 The Arctic basin extended itself as low as to N. lat. 50 deg. by a slow 

 process of submergence from north to south. 



Again the northern hemisphere emerged, apparently, in a con- 

 trary direction, or from south northwards ; again the agencies of ice 

 and snow and excessive rainfall are exhibited, till again, for its 

 general arrangement of land and sea, this immediate district and 

 England generally is presented with the like relations as it had at 

 the period of the Crag-sea. 



The general character and the order of change of the Kainozoic period 

 admits of being thus briefly told ; but when it is attempted to follow 

 it out in its details, it is found to be a long and complicated record. 



Over the whole of the European area, as yet less accurately traced 

 across the Asiatic, very distinct upon the American continent, there 



