NOTES AND QUERIES. 



139 



flint, but not a vestige of any primitive rock. This loam contains an abundance 

 of very small fragments of tertiary shells, resembling tliose from the crag, as 

 also does tlie sand above it. The boulders of gneiss met ^vith ou the beach by 

 Messrs. Trimmer and Gium, we may venture to believe, had previously fallen 

 from the boukler-clay above ; and those seen by Mr. Gumi embedded in the 

 cliff, I am disposed to think, were driven in and covered up by violent tides 

 prevailing on that shore, having first fallen from above, and been carried out to 

 sea by retiring waves. Neither after frequeut iterations of long-continued ex- 

 aminations of the drift in West Norfolk ; the written reports of an iiitelligent 

 well-sinker upon the beds passed through in forty wells, chiefly in W est Nor- 

 folk, with a few extending into the centre of the county ; nor from the ex- 

 aminations of Dr. Mitchell* have I been able to obtain any information that 

 would lead me to believe in the existence of two boulder-clays. 



Both in the gravel-beds and boulder-clay throughout the counties of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk large and small rolled masses of primitive rocks are almost every- 

 where met with, so that tlie occurrence of them on the Gorleston beach is to 

 be expected, and therefore they prove nothing towards the definition of two 

 boulder-clays there. 



Recently I have taken opportunities of examining into the superficial strata, 

 from the drift above the boulder-clay successively do^\-n to the chalk. In tlie 

 first instance at Lowestoft, where the upper drift, boulder-clay, with the under- 

 lying sand and loam have been opened ; next at Gorton Clifl', where the boulder- 

 clay, with the subjacent sand, and the so-called lower boulder-clay are visible 

 in the cliff ; then at Gorleston, where but a small seam of boulder-clay beneath 

 the vegetable soil covers the under-lying sands, and where the loam beneath is 

 rarely visible ; lastly, where a well has been bored down into the chalk. 

 Surely, in this last instance, had a lower boulder-clay existed, some indications 

 of it would have been brought to light. 



The diagrams of sections (p. llOj will illustrate the above descriptions, and 

 assist in the comprehension of my view of the divisions of the Drift in Norfolk 

 and Suffolk. 



To the north of Yarmoutli, at Caister Castle, at Ormsby, and the neighbour- 

 ing villages which I have examined, the boulder-clay is again seen capping the 

 inferior drift-sands, it having been removed from them by denudation at the 

 embouchure of the three rivers, "Waveney, Yare, and Bure, at Breydon Broad. 

 At Ormsby, in a brick-yard, the ferruginous loam of the lower drift is met with 

 nearer the surface, not enclosing a single boulder. To the west of the sea- 

 shore, about five iniles inland from Lowestoft and Gorton, and at Somerleyton 

 brickfield, also at Barnby and Eellough, near Beccles, the boulder-clay is seen 

 covered by the upper-drift, and "warp of the drift," of Trimmer. At Somer- 

 leyton, in the brickfield, a well has been sunk in the loam and sand beneath the 

 boulder-clay to the depth of forty feet ; and these beds have been opened hori- 

 zontally to nearly the same depth to jjrocure brick-earth, v/ithout meeting with 

 a boulder of any kind, nor even a flint-stone of a size adapted for paving; no- 

 thing but smaR angular shingle and pebbles. 



In West Norfolk the boulder-clay lies for the most part immediately upon 

 the chalk ; but when a bed of sand or gravel intervenes, no fragments of ter- 

 tiary marine shells are to be found in it, as in similarly placed sands in East 

 Norfolk, the former bed lying beyond the western and northern margin of the 

 crag formation. The position of the boulder-clay near to the surface is shown 

 with surprising accuracy upon Smith's Geological Maps of Norfolk and Suffolk 

 by the dark drab-colour used for designating the heavy lands in those counties. 

 If I may presume to suggest an alteration of my late esteemed friend's divisions 



* " On the Drift, &c. by J. Xitcliell, L.L.D. Geological Proceedings, vol. iii.. p. 2. 



