and Freshxvater Deposits of Eastern Noifolk. 359 



beach, the clay, containing broken chalk flints, being traceable 

 for seven feet under the chalk. It is known to have extended 

 formerly much further in a seaward direction. It appeared 

 to me impossible that any landslips or movements of the pre- 

 sent cliffs could have given rise to this inverted position of the 

 chalk and newer formation. Some persons employed in the 

 Preventive Service assured me that the cliffs immediately 

 above and behind this chalk are upwards of 400 feet high, 

 but they appeared to me less elevated. They also said that 

 in digging a well at Trimmingham at the top of the cliff they 

 reached chalk at a depth of 120 feet from the surface. With- 

 out insisting on the precise accuracy of their measurements, I 

 think it by no means improbable that the three protuberances 

 of chalk may belong to a much larger mass, which still forms 

 the nucleus of, the hill called Trimmingham Beacon, and I 

 have no doubt, that as the sea encroaches, the chalk will event- 

 ually occupy more of the cliffs between Trimmingham and 

 Cromer. 



In like manner it may be observed that in other localities 

 further to the north these masses of chalk are included in 

 di'ift, or where strata of white chalk rubble enter largely into 

 the composition of the cliffs we always find the chalk cropping 

 out in the interior at a short distance from the shore. 



In speculating on the time when, and the manner in which, 

 the protuberances of chalk near Trimmingham have been 

 brought into their present position, we may safely assume that 

 the event happened after the deposition of the greater part of 

 the drift, which has been subjected to precisely the same 

 movements, and abuts in some places in vertical beds against 

 the wall of displaced chalk. As the submerged forest before 

 mentioned occurs both to the north and south of Trimming- 

 ham at about the level of low water, we must suppose that 

 the Trimmingham cliffs have participated in the subsidence of 

 300 or 400 feet, and in the subsequent upheaval to an equal 

 amount which the buried forest has undergone. If we ima- 

 gine the drift to have accumulated gradually while the first 

 or downward movement was going on, we must conclude that 

 the disturbance of the beds did not take place till nearly the 

 whole of this movement was completed ; for had it occurred 

 sooner, the upper beds in the Trimmingham cliffs would have 

 been unconformable to the lower ones, whereas they are seen to 

 be conformable throughout a thickness of at least two or three 

 hundred feet of the beds above the chalk. I conceive there- 

 fore that the deranged position of the chalk and newer forma- 

 tion was more probably effected during or after the upheaval 

 of the mass, and must in that case have been a very modern 



