70 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



this coast in 1848, and several visits since paid to it, in company with 

 Mr. Morris, Mr. Godwin- Austen, and other geologists, confirmed myself 

 and my companions in the same view — a view, I find, which agrees 

 with that taken by the Rev. Mr. Gunn, who has made this part of the 

 coast his especial stndy for some years past. So variable, however, is 

 the condition of the cliff, that on each occasion some new point of 

 interest has been displayed. 



Commencing with the lowest beds of the series, the Chalk and over- 

 lying Crag are not exposed. The dark sandy clay (g), known as 

 the Forest bed, from the abundance, amongst other remains, of stems 

 and trunks of trees found in and on it, here forms the base of the 

 cliff ; but it is only exposed at a few spots, and when the talus, too 

 frequent at the foot of the cliff, is washed away. Immediately upon 

 it is a thin bed of sand, gravel, and clay, in variable proportions, con- 

 taining a number of mammalian remains, and especially characterised 

 by the El&phas antiquus. 



Above this is a series of thin beds of sand (Ji), with subordinate 

 gravel and clay seams, together from twelve to twenty feet thick. 

 No fossils had hitherto been found here in this part of the section, 

 but in a visit there in 1858, the Bev. Mr. Gunn showed me, on the 

 south of Mundesley, a thin seam of pebbly clay ( x ) in the lower part of 

 this series, and only one or two feet above the Forest bed, full 

 of Freshwater shells, chiefly Unio, Cyclas, Pisidium, etc., all, I 

 believe, of recent species, and like those in the overlying Freshwater 

 deposit (b) . * On examining the same zone, on the north of Mun- 

 desley, I could not find the same clay bed, but I found in a higher seam 

 of sand Gylas and Succinea; and further I found above this level, and 

 in the middle of h, a thin seam full of some marine shells, but in a 

 very fragile condition. They consisted of the common Mytilus edulis, 

 with Balani attached to some Littorina littoralis ? Natica, and one or 

 two other indeterminable specimens. Above this series (Ji) is the 

 great bed of Boulder clay (g), here not more than seven to fifteen 

 feet thick. North and south of Mundesley, this is succeeded by a 

 series of laminated clays, upper Boulder clay, loams and sands, 



(f) -> °f great thickness — with a bed of gravel capping the whole. 

 But at Mundesley these upper beds have been removed and an old 

 valley, the bottom of which is occupied by a Freshwater deposit, cut 

 through them. The section, which is well exposed in the cliff', shows 

 the former old valley to have been deeper than the present one, and 

 scooped out through all the sands and gravels (f), the Boulder clay 



(g) , and down nearly to the so-called Forest bed. The bottom of this 

 depression is lined first by a bed of gravel, and then filled up to the 

 depth of twenty to twenty-five feet by a peaty clay, abounding in 



* It is probable that this bed of Freshwater clay, before the building of the 

 sea-waH might, without a clear exposure of the cliff, have had the appearance of 

 being prolonged from 6— being on the same level, and much like in mineral 

 character. The bed of gravel (64), which necessarily cuts off all communication 

 with the beds beneath, clearly isolating and separating the upper Freshwater 

 beds (b), from the lower one (h). 



