236 



TEETH OF THE MASTODON IN CRAG. 



250 or 300 feet in thickness, upon the original crag, vvliich rests 

 in situ at their base." — No. 4. (new series) p. 228. The fossils in 

 the crag are not mineralized ; many of them appear to belong to spe- 

 cies living in the present seas. The general characters of the crag 

 are ably given by Mr. Taylor. " A district bordering a hundred 

 miles upon our eastern coast, is occupied by an ancient marine de- 

 posit, continually changing its aspect, yet constant in its peculiar cha- 

 racters, and always to be understood by unerring data: now appear- 

 ing as a ferruginous sandstone, then a compact clay, and again con- 

 siderably indurated ; sometimes blended in a mass of extinct zoo- 

 phytes, sponges and alcyonites, forming a soft rock ; oftener an ir- 

 regularly accumulated mass of decomposed and broken littoral shells, 

 loosely imbedded in sand like an ordinary sea-beach, yet accompa- 

 nied with the remains of unknown animals ; — sometimes forming the 

 substratum of a considerable area ; or, overwhelmed beneath the 

 debris of older strata, only detected at intervals ; — at one point ex- 

 hibiting groups of shell fish allied to those of the neighbouring sea ; 

 and at another, composed of numerous genera, which are neither to 

 be recognized living in any part of our globe, nor assimilating to the 

 fossil shells of other formations." — Phil, Mag. page 350. 



Mr. Taylor, in his account of the Norfolk crag, appears to asso- 

 ciate with it the beds which Mr. Woodward describes as diluvium ; 

 hence he gives a greater extent to the crag formation than Mr. Wood- 

 ward. The latter gentleman states, as a well ascertained fact, that 

 the tooth of a mastodon was obtained from the crag stratum at Whit^ 

 lingham near Norwich ; and he has also a fragment of a toolh of a 

 mastodon, which he took out of the crag at Bramerton. These are 

 the only instances at present known, of the remains of this animal 

 being found in any part of Great Britain. Teeth of the fossil ele- i 

 phant or mammoth are very common. A similar formation to crag 

 is said to be discovered on the French coast between Calais and 

 Cape Blanc Nez : also in the neighbourhood of Tangres near Ant- 

 werp, and in other parts of the Netherlands. 



Mr. Mantell pointed out to me, when at Brighton, that the cliffs 

 there are composed of sand and chalk-flints not worn by attrition, and 

 that they rest on an ancient sea beach, with rolled shingles : in some 

 of their characters, there is a great similarly to the Norfolk crag. 

 The sand is in some parts cemented into hard masses of sandstone, 

 and teeth of the elephant and the horse are found in the cliffs, indi- 

 cating the high antiquity of this deposition. It has been formed in 

 the^valleys or depressions in the chalk, but it is not very easy to ex- 

 plain, how the chalk flints were collected in such masses, and depos- 

 ited without having been subjected to attrition. It is probable that 

 future discoveries may make it necessary to place the crag, the Bag- 

 shot sands, and the conglomerate in the cliffs of Brighton and other 

 parts of the English coast, among the upper tertiary strata, which 

 will be described in the following chapter. 



