774 MR. E. W. HARMER ON THE [Nov. 1 896, 



and Lithoglyphus fuscus.* Bones of the musk ox and glutton, animals 

 now confined to northern latitudes, are also found, and indicate 

 possibly more nearly the temperature then prevailing in Norfolk. 

 Many stools of trees such as now inhabit Great Britain occur in the 

 so-called Forest Bed, but these have all been drifted, perhaps some 

 distance, and possibly from the south. 2 



More than once during the deposition of the Cromer Beds the 

 estuary was shifted to the east, and the low-lying land from which 

 the salt water had retired was occupied by nuviatile deposits and 

 tenanted by a flora similar, as Mr. Beid has shown, to that of the 

 Norfolk broads at the present day. Once more the sea advanced 

 upon the north-eastern margin of Norfolk, leaving behind it, on its 

 retreat, sands containing the northern shells Leda myalis and 

 Astarte borealis. These sands again were covered by freshwater 

 beds, in which occur leaves of the Arctic forms JBetula nana and 

 Salbc polaris, and this Arctic freshwater bed forms a link connecting 

 the Pliocene with the Pleistocene period. 



With the latter a renewed subsidence of Holland commenced, 

 almost equal in importance to that of the Pliocene era, for at 

 Amsterdam the Amstelien is overlain by more than 600 feet of 

 recent and Pleistocene deposits. The relation of the Glacial beds of 

 the Low Countries to those of England presents an interesting and 

 important field of enquiry, but one which cannot be entered upon 

 in this paper. It may perhaps be noticed, however, that no 

 •deposits of character similar to that of the Till or Contorted Drift 

 of Norfolk have been met with in the borings here described. In 

 Drenthe, to the N.E. of the Zuiderzee, in the island of Texel, on 

 the coast, and in Urk, beds of hard Till occur which I have not 

 •seen, but as to the glacial character of which Dr. Lorie entertains 

 no doubt. Extending somewhat farther to the south there exist, 

 some miles west of Utrecht, steep hills of sand and gravel which 

 seem to be the terminal moraine of the Scandinavian ice-sheet. 

 In a deep railway -cutting which I visited with Dr. Lorie contortions 

 were to be seen closely resembling those of the Norfolk cliffs, and, 

 within the space of a few hundred yards, as many large boulders 

 as could be found at any one time on the beach between Wey- 

 bourn and Cromer. The south-western limit of the Scandinavian 

 Drift in Holland is marked on the map (PL XXXIV.) by a dotted 

 line. 



The ice-sheet by which Drenthe and the eastern provinces of 

 Holland were invaded came from the Baltic, and not from Norway, 

 since the erratics found in them are Swedish and not Norwegian. 

 It does not seem that the Scandinavian ice-stream penetrated 

 to the Dutch coast, except in the north as before stated, the 



1 No perfect skeletons occur in the Cromer Beds. With few exceptions 

 (one of which Mr. Reid considers derivative), remains of the larger mammalia 

 are confined to the estuarine deposits. 



2 Mr. Reid, however, has found leaves of the oak, etc., which could hardly 

 have been drifted, in some of the Cromer Beds. The climate of this period 

 seems to me to have been milder than that of the Upper Crag, although glacial 

 conditions may have come on somewhat rapidly towards its close. 



