On the Newer Pliocene Period in England. 383 



clay, occupying sheet 49 and the north-east of sheet 50 of the Ord- 

 nance map, into land, the accumulation against the shore of this 

 land of thick shingle-beaches at Halesworth and Henham, and the 

 outspread of this in the form of seams and beds of shingle in a sand 

 originally (from its yielding shells in that region) called by him 

 the Bure- valley bed, and which Prof. Prestwich recognized under 

 the term " Westleton Shingle." As the valley of the Crag river 

 subsided northwards as the conversion of this part of the Chil- 

 lesford clay into land occurred, there was let in from the direc- 

 tion of the Baltic the shell Tellina bcdtJiica, which is not present in 

 the beds of Stage I. The formation thus beginning he traced south- 

 wards nearly to the limit in that direction of the Chillesford clay 

 about Chillesford and Aldboro'. The Cromer Till he regards as the 

 modification of this formation by the advance of the Crag glaciers 

 into the sea or estuary where it was accumulated, such advance 

 having been due partly to this northerly subsidence, but mainly to 

 the increase of cold. Then, after describing a persistent uncon- 

 formity between this Till and the Contorted Drift, from the eastern 

 extremity of the Cromer cliff (but which does not appear in the 

 western) to its furthest southern limit, he showed how the great sub- 

 mergence set in with this drift, increasing much southwards, but 

 still more westward towards Wales. The effect of this was to sub- 

 merge the area of Eed Crag converted into land during Stage I., so 

 that the Contorted Drift lies upon it 50 feet thick, and to cause the 

 retreat of the ice which had given rise to the Till to the slopes of 

 the Chalk "Wold; whence masses of reconstructed chalk were 

 brought by bergs that broke off from it and were imbedded by their 

 grounding in this drift, contorting it (and in those parts only) by 

 the process. He then traced, in the form of gravels at great eleva- 

 tions, the evidences of this submergence southwards and westwards, 

 showing it to have increased greatly in both directions, but mostly 

 in the western ; and he connects these gravels with the Contorted 

 Drift by the additional evidence of one of these marl masses, in 

 which he found a pit excavated near the foot of Danbury Hill, in 

 the London-clay country of South Essex, which hill is covered 

 from base to top by this gravel. The gravel which thus covers 

 Danbury Hill, of which the summit has an elevation of 367 feet, 

 rises in North Kent to upwards of 500 feet ; to between 400 and 500 

 feet on the Neocomian within the "Weald ; to 600 feet in North 

 Hants (where it overlooks the Weald), and also in Wilts, Berks, and 

 the adjoining parts of Bucks ; to 420 feet in South Hants ; to 540 

 feet in Oxfordshire ; to 400 feet in Cornwall ; to upwards of 700 

 (and perhaps 1000 and more) in the Cotteswolds ; to 1200 feet in 

 Lancashire, and to 1340 feet in North Wales. Eastwards, through 

 Kent towards France, the elevation falls, and in the north of 

 Prance appears to be about 130 feet, whence northwards the evi- 

 dences of the submergence are furnished by the Campinian sands 

 and the diluvium of North Germany and Holland. 



In Stage III. the author traced the rise from this depression, the 

 increase of the ice from the greater snow-interception caused by it 

 on the Pennine chain, and the consequent advance of the glacier- or 

 land-ice. This advance gave rise to the Chalky Clay, which was the 



