Geoloyy of Norfolk. 
477 
on the borders of Suffolk, of which it is said that a gentleman, 
being asked in which county his property was situated, replied, 
" Sometimes in the one, sometimes in the other j it blows back- 
wards and forwards." 
In the district of thin upper drift we may include the western 
escarpment, in which the chalk and other rocks are covered only 
by a warp, or by a warp upon a thin crust of gravel and sand. 
There, however, the thinness of the covering must be considered 
not as an original condition of deposit, but as the result of de- 
nudation during the period of elevation, since there is reason to 
believe, from the patches of till remaining at the heads of some 
of the valleys — till being also known to lie under the alluvium of 
the marshes — that this western side of the watershed was covered 
during the period of submergence with as deep accumulations 
of upper and lower drift as the eastern side ; that they have been 
more denuded during their elevation, owing to the greater acclivity 
of the base on which thev rested, and that the gravel and sand 
now in contact with the chalk were deposited after their removal, 
but before the formation of the Gaytonthorpe beds, and of the 
Nar clav, and the warp. 
Towards the bottom of the valleys, and as they approach the 
alluvial district, they are covered by a deeper warp, which pro- 
duces some small tracts of strong or deep loams, sometimes upon 
an absorbent, sometimes upon a retentive base, ramifying, with 
the contour of the surface, among tracts of lighter and stronger 
soil, under conditions very similar to those which have been 
described on the eastern side of the county. 
V. Western Alluvial District. 
This valuable, improved, and still improving tract is divisible, 
like the alluvium of East Norfolk, into two sub-districts, that of 
the clav or loam, and that of the peat, the former the nearest to 
the sea, the latter at the inland extremity of the alluvial district ; 
but as I have merely passed rapidly across it I do not undertake 
to define their limits. 
Sections of the alluvium are only laid open in occasional exca- 
vations. These, as recorded by local observers, are such as to 
indicate the gradual silting up of an estuary until the salt water 
was excluded and a peaty morass formed, liable to inundations 
of fresh water. When arrived at this state its further desicca- 
tion was effected by the embanking of tracts lying nearer to the 
sea. 
Mr. Rose has given the following as the succession of depo- 
sits laid open in the excavation of the Eau Brink Canal, near 
Lynn : — 
2 K 2 
