435 
The following observations on the precipices or cliffs on the n.e. 
sea coast of Norfolk, read at a meeting of the Royal Society, 
on November 20th, 174G, will doubtless be of interest to the mem- 
bers of the Norfolk and Norwich Natural History Society, in 1878. 
“July 19th, 174G. I had the pleasure of seeing those stupendous 
and amazing precipices which bound our n.e. sea coast, and rode 
four miles between them and the sea. I can assure you I was 
highly delighted with viewing them, and as Sir Richard Steelo 
says by the Dover cliffs, ‘ Whoever looks upon these precipices and 
is not moved with terror, must either have a very good head or a 
very bad one.’ These dreadful heights are equally dangerous to 
come nigh, above or below, as they are so frequently tumbling 
down and as often washed away by the raging billows, and although 
they are twenty, thirty, and in some places forty yards and upwards 
in perpendicular altitude, yet I am credibly informed, the sea has 
got of the land at least 110 yards in less than twenty years’ time 
for some miles along the coast. 
“ The various strata which make up this long chain of moun- 
tainous cliffs, must be greatly entertaining to every one who takes 
pleasure in looking into the many changes which the earth has 
undoubtedly undergone since its first creation. Vegetable mould 
oaz, sands of various kinds and colours, clay, loams, flints, marles, 
chalk, pebbles, &c., arc here to be seen at one view, beautifully 
interspersed, and frequently the same kind many times repeated^ 
as if at one time dry land had been the surface, then the sea, after 
morassy ground, then the sea, and so on till these cliffs were then 
raised to the height wo now find them. 
“What makes this come up almost to demonstration, are the 
roots and trunks of trees which are to be seen at low water in 
several places on the coast near Hasborough and Walket [Walcot]. 
“With respect to the fossil tooth I sent some time ago, I could 
trace nothing more out than what I had before informed you, but 
that bones of animals are often found here is undisputably true, 
and I have now by me another tooth of elephant, found betwixt 
Munsly and Hasborough. [In a foot-note, he says, “ the tooth was 
much more decayed than that I before sent you, and hath several 
pieces broken off, yet it weighs lOHbs.”] 
“ That the reason why the rest of the bones of these animals are 
not preserved so commonly as the teeth, I am informed is, their 
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