HARMER : FIELD EXCURSION TO CROMER, ETC. 307 
of about seven miles along the beach to Cromer gave an oppor- 
tunity for the examination of the Lower Glacial, and some of 
the later PUocene deposits lying to the west of the latter place. 
At Weybourne, and towards Sheringham, the Wej^bourne 
bed, the latest horizon of the Crag formation, was observed 
resting on the Chalk, the Contorted Drift occupying the upper 
part of the cliff. A bed of unworn flints may be seen here, as 
elsewhere, at the base of the Crag. It is from similar beds of 
a remanie character, occurring also at the base of different 
horizons of the Crag, that the remains of Mastodon and other 
mammalia, often in a highly phosphatized condition, have been 
found. Such fossils have been regarded as of the age of the 
deposits under (not in) which they are found. The v/riter 
believes, however, they are derivative, equally with the flints 
and phosphatic nodules with which they are associated. The 
bottom of the German Ocean is not littered with the bones and 
teeth of contemporary animals at the present day, and it is 
improbable that such was the case in Pliocene times ; moreover, 
these fossils seem of a much older type than the mDlluscan 
fauna of the Crag. 
The fauna of the Weybourne deposit is exceedingly poor 
compared with the older zones of the Crag formation, comprising 
only 50 or 60 species of mollusca, as against more than 400 known 
from the Coralline Crag. The southern shells which characterised 
the latter had disappeared from the North Sea basin at this 
period, and had been replaced by others of a strongly boreal 
character. It is somewhat puzzling therefore to find that a few 
rare specimens of the southern or extinct species of the earlier 
Crag re-appeared afterwards in the IVIiddle Glacial Sands. 
The so-called " Forest-Bed " strata, which occur at the 
base of the cliff, are not well exposed, being often covered by 
the beach or by the accumulation of talus. They do not represent 
the site of an ancient woodland, as formerly supposed, but the 
estuarine deposits of the Rhine and its affluents, or the fresh- 
water beds which accumulated near the margin of that river. 
The fossil remains of the larger mammaha, principally the bones 
or teeth of the southern form, Elephas meridionalis, are only 
