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prodigious bulk and weight, which are so great that the country 
people thereabout have never thought it worth while to save them 
from the fury of the tempestuous waves.* 
“ After giving you a short account of what I thought worth my 
notice on our n.e. coast, I shall here lay before you what I have 
observed in some marl pits at a place called Cantley White House, 
about three miles from Norwich almost k.e. and adjacent to the 
country seat of the Honorable Tlios. de Yerc, Esq. These marl, 
or rather chalk pits are made in the side of a long chain of hills 
which run alongside the river Yar, or about a furlong or two now 
and then distant from it. [Mr. Arderon must have meant Whit- 
lingham, which is three- an d-a-half miles from Norwich. Cantley 
is ten miles distant, and moreover has no hills.] These hills I take 
to have been formerly the boundaries to an arm of the sea which 
made Norwich a famous sea-port : this some of our antient his- 
torians make mention of as an undoubted truth, tho’ now looked 
upon as a fable, as no footsteps [s/c] remain above ground at this 
day. In tho above-mentioned marl pits I have lately discovered a 
stratum of shells of about two feet thick, running nearly parallel 
to the horizon, and I believe nigh level with some parts of the 
ground in Norwich. This seems to put the matter out of all 
dispute, and fairly confirms our ancient history. [In some notes to 
this paragraph he quotes from the ‘ Mercurius Centralis,’ by the 
Rev. Thos. Lawrance who is of opinion these shells, and all others 
underground are lodged there by subterranean currents. In the 
‘ Natural History of Lancashire ’ by Dr. Leigh, the author boldly 
affirms all fossils to be disports of nature, or lusus natural.] I 
examined carefully this stratum where I found a great many kinds 
of shells,! but none which had withstood time’s devouring teeth, 
so as to bear the handling, excepting the common wilk, some of 
which were very perfect. 
“ Amongst the variety of things I took notice of in this stratum, 
was a piece of coal which I picked out from amongst the shells. 
This must have been there as long as they, and been brought from 
some other county, as nothing of the kind is to be found hero, but 
# Dr. Thomas Brown of this city presented the Royal Society with a 
petrified bone found at Winterton in the year IGGG. 
f Common cockle, black mussel, oyster, pectunculus, &c. 
