445 
Tlio forest,” says Professor Boyd Dawkins, “covered a large 
portion of the area of the North Sea,” and “was mainly composed 
of sombre Scotch Firs and dark clustering Yews, relieved in the 
summer by tlie lighter-tinted foliage of the Spruce and the Oak, 
and in the winter by the silvery gleam of the Birches, that 
clustered thickly with the Alders in the marshes, and stood out 
from a dense undergrowth of Sloes and Hazels.”* 
llie Bear, the Glutton, many remarkable Deer, the Pthinoceros, 
Hippopotamus, Beaver, two if not three species of Elephant, and 
other mammals, have left their remains to enrich our museums, and 
to tell tlio talc of the former inhabitants of this period.t 
Mention has previously been made of the connection of tlio 
Norfolk Chalk with tliat of Lincolnshire. In Pliocene and 
Pliocene times, rivers may liavo commenced to erode their courses 
in it, making outlets to the sea. “ These actions [to quote 
jMr. Skertchly] resulted in reducing the barrier to outliers; one 
between the Witham, and the throe united rivers [Welland, Nene, 
and Ouse], tlio other between tliat united stream and the Little 
Ousc. As submergence went on, the sea added its powers to that 
of the rivers, and finally the Chalk disappeared entirely. The sea 
was now brought directly in contact with the widespread outcrops 
of the yielding Kimcridge and Oxford Clays, and the denudation of 
the Fenland basin proceeded at a rapid pace.” t Thus the Wash is 
a great bay, and not an estuary. 
'ibis depression of the area, which allowed the sea to encroach on 
the land, probably took place in Pliocene times, while the close of 
this period, marked by the estuarine Forest Bed series, and the 
forest growth elsewdiere, tells of some uprising. 
Then a great change came over the surfoce of our country. It 
may have come slowly, but surely enough the climate altered from 
temperate to arctic; and the succeeding deposits, which were spread 
lar and wide over the surface of Norfolk, are the relics of that 
* Address to Department of Anthropology, British Association, 1SS2. See 
also C. Reid, ‘ Geology of the Country around Cromer’ (1882). 
Sufffk’^(18^2)" *^”’ Norfolk and 
‘ Geology of the Fenland ’ (Geol. Survey), p. 217. 
