502 SIR H. H. HOWORTH ON THE SHINGLE-BEDS [Aug. 1895, 



of iron and a deep hollow like a dock, which, is always full of water, 

 deep beneath which the ballast lies buried. Some of the ballast had 

 been taken by fishing-boats, and from a heap of this on the beach 

 south of Hunstanton the specimens exhibited by Sir Henry were 

 procured. The whole of the ballast had been offered for metal to 

 the road-surveyor, but he declined it on the ground that it was not 

 worth the great expense of haulage over the soft sand between the 

 wreck and the shore. The speaker was informed that in some cases 

 such ballast had been disposed of at Lynn for road-metal or paving, 

 and he strongly suspected that it was carried in barges far inland 

 for similar purposes. 



With regard to the subject of Sir Henry's paper, he agreed with 

 him that most of the material of the shingle of East Anglia had 

 drifted from west to east, and that none of it could have been derived 

 directly from Belgium in Pleistocene times. He thought that 

 gravels of very different age and origin had generally been classed 

 together ; that the constituents had been handed on second, third, 

 or fourth hand from various older beds — the white quartz-pebbles 

 from the Carboniferous ; the liver-coloured quartzite from the New 

 Red; the lydian-stone from the Lower Greensand (from which also 

 many quartzites, etc. were derived) ; small flint-pebbles from the 

 lower part, and larger flint-pebbles from the upper part, of the 

 Lower London Tertiaries ; and rocks and fossils from Belgium 

 second-hand from the English Crags. 



Mr. H. B. Woodward, while agreeing with the main contention 

 of the Author that the Westleton Shingle was derived largely from 

 Eocene pebble-beds, thought that some of the stones might have 

 come from the Norwich Crag and Eorest Bed Series. Mr. Clement 

 Reid had noted quartzites, etc. in the Eorest Bed Series (' Geol. 

 Cromer,' pp. 55-57), and some of these rocks might have travelled 

 from the Belgian area. 



He could not support the notion that the shells of the Bure 

 Valley Beds were derivative. The Westleton Beds (of Westleton) 

 were, in his opinion, of Middle Glacial age. 



With regard to the diluvial action advocated by the Author, he 

 observed that Norfolk geologists sometimes spoke of the ' Flood 

 Gravels ' that succeeded the great ice-sheet which formed the Chalky 

 Boulder Clay ; and perhaps the diluvial movement suggested by the 

 Author might be attributed to the melting of ice which formed the 

 Lower Boulder Clay or Cromer Till. 



Mr. Monckton thought that the evidence brought forward by 

 Prof. Prestwich did go a long way to show that the Westleton 

 Shingle, and the scattered patches of gravel in the South of England 

 which contained numerous white quartz and light-coloured quartzite- 

 pebbles, belonged to an older period than the Northern Drift of the 

 same area, with liver-coloured and reddish quartzite-pebbles. He 

 felt keenly the difficulty in deciding as to the origin of the various 

 gravels, the evidence being most imperfect and scanty. He had 

 listened to the paper with great interest. 



Mr. B. S. Herries asked whether the Author correlated the so- 



