NOTES AND QUERIES, 



141 



of these superficial beds, it will be into the following order, viz., upper drift, 

 boulder clay, and lower drift. 



The Upper di'ift consists of beds of gravel formed of rounded flint, sand- 

 stones, quartz-rock, gneiss, syenite, and granite, as pebbles rather than 

 boulders, accompanied with a greater or less quantity of ferruginous sand or 

 sandy loam. In this division I include Trimmer's " warp of the di-ift," con- 

 sidering its formation but the termination of one long period of deposition, 

 diffusion, erosion, denudation, and re-arrangement of the materials, and lastly, 

 I conceive that by the surging of muddy waves, the final adjustment was accom- 

 plished immediately anterior to or just as that portion of the earth was emerging 

 from the water. 



Tlie Boulder-clay has a well-marked distinctive character in its great pro- 

 portion of oolitic and chalk-boulders, aU more or less rounded and scored; 

 also in the almost entire absence of stratification in the bed. This clay occurs 

 either as a bed of blue, di-ab-coloured, or marly clay, these modifications arising 

 from the predominance of the parent Kimmeridge, Oxford, and blue Lias- 

 clays, or the prevalence of the clays of the Inferior and Great Oolites, or the 

 superabimdance of the detritus of the Chalk with its flints ; for in this clay 

 boulders occiu^ derived from all the oolites and from the various rocks of the cre- 

 taceous system, witli a comparative sprinklhig only from the primitive division 

 of rocks. 



The Lower Drift is found to be stratified alternations of sand, gravelly- 

 shingle, and ferruginous-loam with angular fragments and pebbles of flint 

 embedded in it. The layers of sliingle in the sand consist of very small frag- 

 ments of Tertiary shells resembling those of the Crag. I consider the period 

 during which these post-tertiary beds were depositing as one epoch ; but why 

 the agency of icebergs should liave occurred whilst the boulder -clay only was 

 depositing I will leave to other theorists to enunciate tlie reason. 



The organic contents of the beds sunk and bored through at the Yarmouth 

 Brewery well are, first, ui the Breydon-mud, Ostrea edtdis, CanJiim edide, 

 Tellina jilaiiafa of Pennant, Tellina Bathica, and Peden operculuris. In the 

 Lower-drift, what I am disposed to call m this instance Crag-drift, fragments 

 only of tertiary shells are found ; in what I have called the Crag in the section 

 Mytilus edulis, Tellina Bathica, and apart of 2^Balanus\ in what Mr. Prestwich 

 called, on his inspection of specimens of the clays, London and Plastic clays, 

 and in whose opinion I fully concur, no shells or fragments of shells were met 

 with, or if any have been found they have not been preserved. 



Judging from the products of the Yarmouth Well, and also from those of 

 the well sinkings and horizontal diggings at Somerleyton, I consider it to be 

 established that there is not a second boulder-clay in East Norfolk or Suffolk. 



A.S in some measure connected with the subject of this paper, it may be in- 

 teresting to your readers to learn whence the mammalian remains are so 

 constantly dredged up on this coast, and also what they are. The Oyster-bed 

 from which they are brought up with the living oysters 1 have laid down in 

 the accompanying section ; it occurs at from a mile and a-haK to two miles from 

 the beach, and at a depth of about eleven fathoms. They consist of teeth and 

 bones of the skeletons of two species of mammoth, teeth of Hippopotamus, 

 heads of the male and female Megaceros Hihemiciis — an atlas of the megaceros 

 with a Turritella incrassata impacted in the canal of the vertebral artery, has 

 been met with, a horn-core of Bos p-imigeuius, and one with a vertebra and 

 metacarpal bone of Bus longifrons, jaw v.dth teeth of Ecpms cabalhs, cervical 

 vertebra of a Grampus, and a lower jaw, Avithout teeth, of a Wakus — the last is 

 in the possession of Mr. Owles of this town, in whose collection, in that of Mr. 

 Nash residing here, and in my own, the above named fossils are preserved. — 

 C. B. Hose, F.G.S., Great Yarmouth. 



