Yol.  49.] 
ANNIVERSARY  ADDRESS  OF  THE  PRESIDENT. 
n 
The  Westleton  Beds,  as  above  defined,  were  found  to  rest  uncon- 
formably  on  various  underlying  beds  :  in  places  on  the  Forest-bed 
Series,  elsewhere  on  the  Chillesford  Clay,  while  occasionally  the 
latter  had  been  partly  or  entirely  eroded  before  the  deposition  of 
the  Westleton  Beds.  A  similar  discordance  has  been  noted  between 
the  Westleton  Beds  and  the  overlying  Glacial  deposits,  so  that  the 
former  mark  a  distinct  period,  characterized  by  a  definite  fauna 
and  by  particular  physical  conditions.  In  spite  of  the  discordance 
above  mentioned,  Prof.  Prestwich  is  prepared  to  claim  the  Forest- 
bed  as  part  of  the  Westleton  Series,  if  the  former  should  prove  to  be 
newer  than  the  Chillesford  Beds.  The  Westlefon  Beds  being 
marine,  and  the  Mundesley  Beds  estuarine  and^  eshwater,  that 
author  proposed  to  use  the  double  term  to  indicate  the  two  facies. 
But  these  two  facies  were  found  to  be  local,  and  the  most  persistent 
feature  of  the  beds  is  the  presence  of  a  shingle  of  precisely  the  same 
character  over  a  very  wide  area.  By  means  of  this  shingle  the 
Westleton  Beds  may  be  identified  far  beyond  East  Anglia.  More¬ 
over,  unlike  the  Glacial  deposits,  they  contain  pebbles  of  southern 
origin. 
In  tracing  the  Westleton  Beds,  or  their  presumed  equivalents, 
from  the  East  Coast  to  the  Berkshire  Downs,  they  are  seen  to  rise 
from  sea-level  to  heights  of  600  feet,  in  the  first  instance  underlying 
all  the  Glacial  deposits,  and  in  the  second  rising  high  above  them, 
so  that  their  seeming  subordination  to  the  Glacial  Series  altogether 
disappears.  At  Braintree,  for  instance,  where  the  Westleton  Beds 
are  largely  developed,  they  stand  up  through  the  Boulder-clay  and 
gravel  which  wraps  round  their  base  ;  while  farther  west,  where 
they  become  diminished  to  mere  shingle-beds,  they  attain  heights 
of  350  to  400  feet,  capping  London  Clay  hills,  where  the  Boulder- 
clay  lies  from  80  to  100  feet  lower  down  the  slope,  the  difference  in 
level  between  the  two  deposits  becoming  still  greater  in  a  westerly 
direction,  until  finally  the  Boulder-clay  disappears.  A  plate  of  dia¬ 
gram-sections  serves  to  illustrate  these  views,  and  we  thus  see  how 
the  Pebbly  Series  of  East  Anglia,  for  the  most  part  at  slight  eleva¬ 
tions  and  covered  by  Boulder-clay  in  Essex,  gets  higher  and  thinner 
and  more  widely  separated  until  it  becomes  a  mere  hill-gravel.  As 
such  it  is  found  capping  isolated  eminences,  370  feet  above  Ordnance 
datum  at  Highbeach,  400  feet  at  Totteridge  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  Lea,  and  600  feet  on  more  than  one  point  of  the  Chilterns,  where 
this  Pebbly  Series  has  been  the  means  of  preserving  small  outliers 
of  the  Tertiaries. 
VOL.  XLIX. 
/ 
