437 
what is brought from distant parts. This seems to prove that the 
use of coals has been known to the ancient Britons, and that they 
brought them hither from the more northern parts when the sea 
covered the greatest part of Norfolk, though in all probability, 
this must have been thousands of years ago. These shells lie four- 
teen yards above the surface of the river, and nearly six beneath 
the top of the hill, and I believe thirty-four yards above the surface 
of the sea at Yarmouth. I have one thing still to relate to you 
which is really wonderful and very much beyond my utmost 
endeavours to find out a sufficient reason for, it is that in these very 
marl pits, and I dare be bold to say six or seven yards lower than 
the above-mentioned stratum of hills, are found an unaccountable 
quantity of stags’ horns, lying in all directions, several 1 took out 
with my own hands, and the workmen who are employed here tell 
me they scarce "work a day but they find more or less of them. 
But with my utmost diligence I have not been able to find one 
whole and entire, nor do the workmen say they ever did, which 1 
take to be very strange. These horns have been very large ones, 
some of the spines measuring twelve inches and upwards in length. 
The horns themselves, many of them, are better than two-and-a- 
half inches in diameter, and several of them above twelve inches 
from spine to spine.” 
On the faith of what a workman told him he makes the following 
remarkable statement, but which I fear, modern geologists will 
doubt the truth of : “ The entire skeleton of a man was found in 
the same bed or stratum, with the above-mentioned horns, as one 
of the workmen assured me he said, he took pains to lay it all 
together upon the grass as regularly as he was able, but his 
curiosity being satisfied, he left it to be ground to pieces by the 
carts and wagons that came hither for the marl. So careless were 
these poor ignorant people of so valuable a specimen of the human 
race ! What instructive inferences might have been drawn from 
such a skeleton, with respect to the magnitude of men in the early 
ages of the world ! I own I cannot but regret the loss of it. 
“ Helmet-stones and belemnites are here found in abundance at all 
depths and in every different stratum , which I think shows that 
the fish that produced these fossils have been all over the county, 
as the like are to be found in every place wherever the earth is 
broken up or a pit digged. 
K k 2 
