426 Geological Society. 



About 2 miles south of the Scandinavian drift-bed several 

 fissures occur in the Magnesian Limestone cliffs and on the fore- 

 shore, filled with various materials that were transported in front 

 of the earliest ice-sheet that advanced upon this part of the coast. 

 The author has already recorded the occurrence in these fissures 

 of Upper Permian red and grey marls and dolomites with clay and 

 peaty trees. Continued examination of two of the fissures where 

 they are exposed between tide-marks on the shore, resulted in the 

 finding of a quantity of freshwater mollusca, ostracoda, and fish- 

 remains. Some mammalian remains also occurred, including those 

 of an elephant (probably Elephas meridionalis) and of a vole 

 (Mimomys). 



Vegetable matter has been washed from various parts of the 

 clay. A large number of seeds came from a single patch of chi/v, 

 and prove to be of Teglian age : they seem to represent a pre- 

 Glacial flora, half of the species of which are either exotic or 

 extinct. Seeds from other parts of the deposit appear to indicate 

 a later horizon, and contain mainly living forms. 



The deposit is a mixed one, and seems to have belonged to a 

 series of late Pliocene and early Pleistocene beds that occupied 

 part of the present area of .the North Sea and were torn up by the 

 advancing ice-sheet, like a great glacial erratic, and thrust into the 

 fissures. 



The fact that the Scandinavian drift in Durham contains only 

 stones of Scandinavian origin has been confirmed, and the marine 

 Arctic shells that occur in it were further collected and a few 

 additions to the faunal list were made. The most interesting of 

 these is Cyrtodaria siliqua Spengler, an American shell which 

 has been recorded hitherto in Great Britain only from the Caith- 

 ness Boulder Clays. 



All the deposits described above are overlain and overridden by 

 the main mass of local Cheviot and Northern drift that caps the 

 cliffs of the Durham coast. 



A suggested correlation of the Durham sequence with the 

 European drifts is attempted, and it is concluded that the fringe 

 of the Scandinavian ice-cap that reached the Durham coast pro- 

 bably corresponds with that of the second and greatest glaciation 

 of Scandinavia, which some Continental geologists correlate with 

 the Piss Stage of the Alps. 



In that case, the main local drift of the north-eastern coast falls 

 into the third and last Glacial Period of Northern Europe. The 

 evidence for Intergiacial lapses in the local drifts is very in- 

 conclusive. 



All the observed features seem to point to the fact that the 

 Scandinavian ice-sheet advanced on the east coast of England in 

 the same way as it invaded Northern Europe round the southern 

 shores of the Baltic, and gave rise to analogous climatic conditions 

 leading to the formation of loess, a fragment of which is found 

 protected from the erosive action of the later local glaciation in a 

 small hollow on the Durham coast. 



