84 PROP. J. PRESTWICH ON THE RELATION OF THE 



8. 0>i the Eelation of the Westleton Beds, or Pebbly Sands of 

 Suffolk, to those of Norfolk, and on their Extension Inland ; 

 with some Observations on the Period of the Final Elevation 

 and Denudation of tlie Weald and of the Thames Valley, Sfc. 

 Bj Joseph Prestwich, D.C.L., F.K.S., F.G.S., &c.— Part I.* 

 (Eead June 5, 1889.) 



PART I. 



§ 1. Introduction. 



In a paper on the Crag Beds of jN"orfolk and Suffolk t which I had 

 the honour of laying before the Society early in 1870, I proposed to 

 term the great bed of flint-pebbles overlying the Chillesford Beds 

 and underlying the Boulder-clay in Suffolk, the " Westleton Sands 

 and Shingle," remarking that '' the importance to be attached to 

 those beds does not arise so much from their exhibition here [Suf- 

 folk], as from the circumstance that they will serve to determine 

 the position and age of some beds of sand and gravel, generally 

 without fossils, which have a wide range in the south-east of 

 England, and the exact [geological] position of which it is impor- 

 tant to know in consequence of their bearing on many interesting 

 problems connected with the denudation of the country." I further 

 mentioned that these marine sands and shingle had a much greater 

 extension than had their associated beds on the ISTorfolk coast, that 

 they ranged through Suffolk, Essex, and far up the Thames Basin, 

 and that the main character by which they were to be recoonized 

 was the great preponderance of well-worn rounded pebbles of 

 flint and of luhite quartz, with smaller variable proportions of 

 angular or subangidar chalk-flints, and of Lower-Oreensand chert 

 and ragstone, mixed with a few pebbles of quartzite, sandstones, 

 slates, and lydian stone, the whole indicating the action of 

 currents or streams, not from the north as with the Glacial Drifts, 

 but from the south and south-east. 



For some years afterwards various circumstances hindered me from 

 resuming my notes, many of which were made in 1845-1855 during 

 the construction of the Great Eastern Railway and its branches, 

 where the sections are no longer visible. At the meeting of the 

 British Association in 1881, however, I gave a short account of the 

 extension inland of these beds, and mentioned their occurrence on 

 some of the hills in Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berk- 



* Part I. only of fhis paper, dealing with the coast sections, is here printed. 

 Parts II. and III. will deal with the relation of the beds here described to the 

 Glacial B'^ds in the Thames Valley, and with some other questions. 



t Quart. Journ. Geol. Sec. toI. xxvii. p. 461. 



