WESTLETON BEDS TO THOSE OF NORFOLK, ETC. 105 



Besides the specimens named above, I also here found specimens 

 of a black chert (Carboniferous ?), of a light-coloured encrinital 

 quartz (Carboniferous ?), of chlorite schist, of a white fossiliferous 

 chert, and of a dark-coloured slaty grit. 



It is, however, at Mundesley, 2| miles north of Bacton, that we 

 find these beds with their typical estuarine and freshwater condi- 

 tions best exhibited. They there form a group of strata differing 

 from those further south only inasmuch as they were deposited 

 under local and different conditions, arising from the early emer- 

 gence of this area, and the consequent introduction of a land fauna 

 and flora. 



In 1870 I made the mistake of supposing that the thin seam 

 of gravel at the base of the Westleton Beds (m), and overlying 

 the Forest Bed, represented the Elephant Bed of the Norfolk 

 geologists. It is true that a few bones have occasionally been 

 washed out of the Porest Bed, and are found in the gravel and 

 sand overlying it ; but the bone-bed proper is the underlying argil- 

 laceous sand in which the forest stumps are rooted, and to which 

 the term of " Forest Bed " also applies, for it is in this bed that 

 the remarkable group of mammalian remains with plant-debris are 

 entombed. It has been questioned whether the stumps found on 

 its surface are really in situ on the spot where the trees grew, 

 or whether they were drifted there from a distance. Such may 

 have been the case with some, but it is difficult to conceive that 

 it could have been so with all. Their wide-spreading roots *, 

 their position on one and the same level, the presence around 

 them of their cones and branches, and the fact that the same bed at 

 other places, where seen in section, is traversed by rootlets evidently 

 in situ, show that the occurrence of such a forest-growth on the 

 surface was both possible and probable. Some trees may doubt- 

 less have been overturned and drifted ; and some strained by 

 storms may have had their roots torn and broken. The argu- 

 ment that the small fibres which end the roots have generally been 

 wanting at from one to three feet from the stem, has been dis- 

 posed of by an observer so experienced on this point as Mr. T. M. 

 Eeade t, who states that in the case even of the more recently sub- 

 merged forests of the Lancashire coast, the fine fibres of the roots 

 are not preserved, having generally rotted away. The erect stumps 

 of the Forest Bed, which I have myself from time to lime seen, 

 though not examined critically, seemed to me generally as good cases 

 of growth in situ as the trees seen in peat-bogs. 



I therefore see no reason to question the previous opinion of a 

 forest-growth in sit it, especially as the existence of a land-surface is 

 confirmed by the presence in many places on the Forest Bed of a 

 clay with land-, freshwater-, and marsh-shells and plants. This 

 land-surface I take as the base on which the Westleton Beds were 



* In one case mentioned by Mr. C. Raid, the circle formed by the spread of 

 the roots was 20 feet across, 

 t Geol. Mag. dec. ii. vol. x. p. 221 (1883). 



