Geology of Norfolk. 
451 
merits and defects will be better understood after the succession 
of deposits above the chalk shall have been described. 
We have seen, that in the person of William Smith, geology 
was of agricultural origin, and was at an early period of his disco- 
veries applied to the business of agriculture. In Marshall, one 
of the earliest writers on the agriculture of Norfolk, we have an- 
other proof of the intimate connexion between geology and agri- 
culture, since he, who merely undertook to describe the practical 
details of the Norfolk system of husbandry, was insensibly led 
into the description of geological phenomena, at a time when 
that science only revelled in crude speculation and soared above 
the observation of facts. 
Justice to so early an observer requires, in this paper, some 
notice of his geological investigations. 
-Marshall resided in Norfolk from 1780 to 1782, during which 
time he had the management of the Suffield estates. He divides 
the country into three agricultural districts, those of East, West, 
and South Norfolk. His description of the Norfolk practice is 
confined principally to East Norfolk, in which he resided, his 
knowledge of the others being acquired by occasional rides 
through them. The surface of East Norfolk he describes as an 
almost uniform flat, except in a border towards the sea-coast, 
which is broken, and in many places bold and picturesque ; and 
except in the more southern hundreds, which abound in marshes 
and fens, or lakes and broads, some of them of considerable size. 
With these exceptions, he pronounces the soil as scarcely con- 
taining an acre which may not be called sandy-loam ; its quality, 
however, differing widely, both in texture and productiveness, in 
general shallow, five or six inches being the maximum of depth, 
the northern part abounding with barren heaths and unfertile in- 
closures, the southern hundreds principally covered with a richer, 
deeper, and highly productive soil. Young, in speaking of this 
district, appears quite at a loss for epithets to express his admira- 
tion of those parts not occupied by broads and marshes : *' The 
arable land is,'' he says, " a fine, deep, putrid, sandy loam, ad- 
hesive enough to fear no drought, and friable enough to throw off 
superfluous moisture, so that all seasons suit it; from texture 
free to work, and from chemical qualities sure to produce in 
luxuriance whatever the industry of man may commit to its fertile 
bosom." Kent calls it a fine sandy loam, equal in value to the 
best parts of the Austrian Netherlands, so fruitful and pleasant 
to work that the occupier is seldom put out of his rotation. This 
is almost the only district of the county respecting the bounda- 
ries of which these writers are agreed ; though they differ widely 
in their estimates of the merits of the husbandry pursued in it. 
In treating of the substrata of East Norfolk, Marshall de- 
