88 
Liiglarid was connected witli the continent, so tliat the relative 
position ot laud and water may have been some hundred and fifty 
feet in diiference. The general aspects of Xorfolk would not he 
nidike what they now are in many respects. The marine action 
had scooped hollows in the accumulated drift beds, and, in many 
places, had cut through them right down to the solid chalk. 
hen the land stood higher, the water fall must have been more 
ra[)iil, and the ilonmlation more effective. Hence atmospherical 
wear and tear rendered still more palpable the initiatory hollowings 
of valleys first ])roduced as tlie laml arose above the water. 
I believe that it is during this stage of Xorfolk hi.story, that we 
have the origination of oiir 15roa<ls. Xot that the latter were what 
we now see them — but that the agencies which scoo])cd out the 
hollows in which the waters of the IJroads now' lie, were then in 
action, d'hose agencies 1 believe to be the effect of land ice. AVo 
have abuiulant geological evidence that the climate— although not 
so rigorous as it had been — was still much colder than it is at 
ju'esent. 1 he liev. Osmond Fisher has pointed out that the 
January isothermal of 32 " aiiproaches nearer to this part of 
]<:nglaml than to any other, and he draws the inference from this, 
tliat the glacial cold might have lingered longer here than any- 
where else, and that its effects may have resulted in external phys- 
ical action. The accumulations of valley giivvel on the flanks of 
the valleys of our rivers, testify to the rigorous climatal conditions 
then in force to produce them. During the winter season it is 
probable those valleys were charged with ice-floes, which w'ould 
assist in widening them. Let it be remembered, that I am speak- 
ing ot a time when the area of the llroads Avas at lea.st one hundred 
and fifty feet above the sea level. The German Ocean did not 
exist, so that the present debouchure of our rivers could not have 
been openly into such a sheet of avater. The ice which lay over 
what is now the Broad district, in moving along the excavated 
valley, would scoop out just such depressions as these we see. 
Professor Bamsay ami most of our best geologists assign the fonna- 
tion of the Swiss, Italian, Scotch, Welsh, ami Cumberland lakes to 
, the effects of ice. This ice, hr descemling from the adjacent high 
mountains 'where it accumulated as glaciers, exercised the greatest 
degree of erosion or scooping out power at their bases. Hence the 
general [>osition of these great lakes all over the northern hemi- 
I) 
