Mli. H. B. WOODWARD ON’ THE SOILS AND SUBSOILS OF NORFOLK. 409 
outcrop in West Norfolk, while elsewhere the relics of Drift, left 
after the erosion of the land, form the main ingredients in the thin 
loamy and sandy soils which prevail, although these have been 
added to by wind-drifted material, and by the clayey residue which 
results from the dissolution of the chalk. 
Young, in his “Light Sand,” included the country about Harling 
and Thetford where there is much loose and blowing sand ; 
a district on the borders of Suffolk, referred to by Trimmer as the 
“District of the thin Upper Drift,” of which it is said “that 
a gentleman, being asked in which county his property was 
situated, replied, ‘Sometimes in the one, sometimes in the other; 
it blows backwards and forwards.’ ”* Here the geological map can 
do no more than indicate “sandy soil” or “loamy soil” on the 
chalk tracts. On the borders of the river valleys the chalk is 
naturally masked to a certain extent by downwash. 
Marls belonging to the Contorted Drift , but consisting of re- 
arranged or ground-up chalk, occur in the neighbourhood of 
Gunton, and westwards to Houghton, Edgefield, and Weybourne, 
and they become more or less incorporated with the Chalky Boulder 
Clay further west towards Walsingham and Fakenham. 
The Chalky Boulder Clay often partakes of the nature of a marl ; 
it is largely a tough bluish-grey clay full of chalk stones, flints, and 
many fragments of all kinds of rocks, but with occasional seams 
and beds of sand and chalky gravel. Analyses of its soils should 
show a great variety of constituents. It weathers into a brown 
stony loam, and usually yields a soil of this character, a soil 
referred to by Trimmer as the “ Warp of the Drift,” but the term 
was applied by him also to rainwash of similar material derived 
from different subsoils. The Boulder Clay covers extensive tracts, 
more especially in central and south-eastern Norfolk, where it forms 
the heavier lands of the county whereon wheat and beans flourish, 
as in the area which extends from Fakenham and Foulsham to 
Dereham, Hingham, Wymondham, Long Stratton, Tivetshall, Diss, 
Ilarleston, aud near Loddon. The land is fairly flat with well- 
timbered hedgerows, with many village greens and commons, and 
broad strips of grassland alongside the roads and laues. Much 
of the country has thus a park- like aspect. 
Around Burlingham the loamy soil is thicker, and the land in 
consequence lighter. It is lighter also in West Norfolk, where the 
* ‘ Geology of Norfolk.’ Journ. R. Agric. Soc. vol. vii. reprint p. 37. 
