﻿The Rev. J. Guim on the Forest-bed in Norfolk and Suffolk. 73 



and the low-level gravels of the river-valleys ; they are supposed 

 to have been formed when the Isle of Wight was still joined to the 

 mainland, and all the rivers now reaching the sea by Poole Har- 

 bour, Christchurch Harbour, Southampton Water, &c. were affluents 

 of a river communicating with an estuary opening to the sea in the 

 direction of Spithead. 



The gravels lying above the step, such as those of Avisford and 

 Waterbeach, Titchfield Common, Beaulieu Heath, and Bournemouth, 

 are looked upon as equivalent in position and age to the high-level 

 valley gravels. 



The level of the gravels on the highest parts of the table-lands 

 is such as to indicate an age far greater than that of the highest 

 gravels of the river-valleys ; but the uniform surface from the 400- 

 feet level downwards points to a long continuance of similar con- 

 ditions, during which the gravel from the highest levels to that of 

 the Bournemouth cliffs was deposited. The area that can with any 

 probability be assigned to the catchment-basin of a river such as 

 that which has been before alluded to, is ouly three quarters of the 

 basin of the Thames above Hampton, within which it is difficult to 

 imagine that such an extent of gravel could have been spread out ; 

 and the inclination of the flattest of the table-lands is for a river 

 such as only mountain-streams have, and quite incompatible with the 

 spreading out of large even surfaces more than twenty miles across. 



It is considered more probable that the materials of the gravel 

 were brought down from the chalk country on all sides by rivers, 

 and spread out in an inlet of the sea shut in on the south, and open- 

 ing out eastwards. This view is not without difficulties : it involves 

 a gradual upheaval of the land, which, when the highest gravels 

 now remaining were being spread out at or near the sea-level, must 

 have stood more than 400 feet lower ; and a considerable part of 

 this upheaval must have taken place since the formation of the 

 gravel in which implements fashioned by man are imbedded. 



2. " On the relative position of the Forest-bed and the Chilles- 

 ford Clay in Norfolk and Suffolk, and on the real position of the 

 Forest-bed." By the Rev. John Gunn, M.A., F.G.S. 



The author commenced by stating that both at Easton Bavent 

 and at Kessingland the Forest-bed is to be seen forming part of the 

 beach, or of the foot of the cliff, and underlying the Chillesford 

 Clay. He con, 4 dered that the soil of the Forest-bed had been depo- 

 sited in an estuary, and that after its elevation the trees, of which 

 the stools are now visible along the coast, grew upon it, and the 

 true Forest-bed was formed. After the submergence of this, first 

 freshwater, then fluvio-marine, and finally marine deposits were 

 formed upon it ; and the author proposed to give the whole of these 

 deposits the name of the "Forest-bed series." The author sug- 

 gested that the Forest-bed itself is represented inland by the stony 

 bed which lies immediately upon the chalk and between it and the 

 Fluvio-marine and Marine Crags, his theory being that the surface 

 of the Chalk, after supporting a Forest-bed fauna, was gradually 

 covered up by successive Crag deposits. 



